Gretchen Morgenson Makes the Case for an Accurate Accounting of Bailout Costs

The methodology that the Treasury Department is using when claiming that we made money on the TARP would imply that the government could make money by issuing a 30-year mortgage at 1.0 percent interest to every homeowners in the country. The vast majority of these mortgages would of course be paid off with interest, therefore the taxpayers would come out ahead.

This is ridiculous accounting, as Gretchen Morgenson points out in her column today. There is an opportunity cost to this money and i...