Originally posted by: tk149
Originally posted by: LunarRay
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The Accounting bit was to simply indicate that what the company shows as a loss may be the loan interest expense recorded by that company which may be construed as income to the lender on the loans made by the Lender. You don't wait until the entire event is finalized to determine Profit or Loss on a particular 'loan'...
Thank you for clarifying, but I'm still not sure that I understand.
1. You're saying that you can determine profit or loss on each individual TARP "loan," as it pays off or defaults. Okay, that's fine. You can take a snapshot of the entire portfolio right now and say "Look, it's profitable because some of the loans have paid back with interest."
2. Alternatively, you are saying that a bank carries the TARP loan as a liability, and adds the interest on the loan to its liabilities on its books. The government can then carry the interest on the loan as an asset on the government's books. No actual money has changed hands, but you can see how much TARP has in profit or loss each month. Has this been done? Doesn't this assume that the bank is capable of paying the loan plus interest? What if it can't?
Have the banks actually been given an actual payoff deadline, or a repayment schedule? If not, then this is a brilliant move by the government because that means there will NEVER be any realized losses on the TARP (unless a bank actually goes bankrupt), and the program is now officially "profitable" and always will be.
Anyway, I'm just saying that as a whole, you can't calculate the profit/loss on TARP as a whole, until you get a final determination on all the loans. Given how well the banks have managed their money, I won't be satisfied until all the actual money gets paid back.