TARP Watchdog: Bailouts May Cost US $24T

The special inspector overseeing Treasury’s TARP program says federal assistance to banks and other financial entities could end up costing taxpayers $23.7 trillion, Bloomberg reports. Aside from the $700 billion bailout, Neil Barofsky says in testimony prepared for told Congress tomorrow, other trillion-dollar federal programs could balloon. “TARP has evolved into a program of unprecedented scope, scale and complexity,” Barofsky says.

The Treasury Department strenuously objects to Barofsky’s estimates, and says the US has spent less than $2 trillion to help troubled financial institutions. “These estimates of potential exposures do not provide a useful framework for evaluating the potential cost,” a spokesman says. “This estimate includes programs at their hypothetical maximum size, and it was never likely that the programs would be maxed out at the same time.” (More Timothy Geithner stories.)