Peter Barnes, Senior Washington Correspondent FOXBusiness
Two new independent reports peg available resources in the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program at just over $100 billion — with one report saying the Treasury still has more than $370 billion in unspent TARP cash on hand.
The amount is important: Analysts and lawmakers are questioning whether the government will have enough TARP funding to finish stabilizing the financial system — especially after results from the government’s bank “stress tests” are released later this month; the results may require the Treasury to invest more capital in banks. Treasury also may need to spend more for auto makers, life insurance companies and other industries that comes knocking on its door for help. “I don’t think you can tell if it’s enough to finish the job because they don’t think we know how big the job is,” said Karen Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics, a research firm in Washington, D.C. “The [government] stress tests for the top 20 banks are still incomplete and then once we get those results, we still aren’t sure what Treasury’s going to do with them.”
