The Bailout Makes A Profit*

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There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the $700 billion bank bailout has finally made a profit. The bad news is that it’s for this week.

Paul Keil at ProPublica reports that $125.2 million came in and only $45.5 million went out through the bailout program over the last week, for a “profit” of $79.7 million. More from Keil:

As always, it’s time for your weekly update on the bank bailouts.There were seven more TARP takers this week, totaling $45.5 million:

These investments are through the Treasury’s program for “healthy banks,” the Capital Purchase Program. The Treasury currently has $197.9 billion invested in more than 550 banks all over the country. You can see the entire list of bailout recipients here.

Of course, bit by bit, banks have been returning bailout funds because of the bailout’s taint and restrictions on executive compensation. Yesterday, the 12th bank returned the money: Sterling Bancshares of Houston, Texas, returned $125.2 million. As you can see from our list of banks that have refunded their bailout money, the 12 have returned $1.16 billion so far. Lately, Capital Purchase Program investments have slowed down considerably, and more bailout money has been coming back to Treasury than has been going out.

This story first appeared on ProPublica.

It is the latest from ProPublica’s new bailout blog. Check out the all-seeing database of the bailout billions

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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