There's an old business joke that
goes like this:
Q: How do you make a million dollars in the airline
industry?
A: Start with a billion dollars.
Reading the coverage this week of the "profits" rolling in from last year's Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) loans, Senior Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward sees glimmers of the same joke, even less funny this time (if such a thing is possible), and told at taxpayers' expense. The TARP version of the joke goes something like this:
Q: How do you make $4 billion in the banking industry?
A: Start with $700 billion in taxpayer money.
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