TARP bill keeps falling

The cost to taxpayers is now down to $51 billion - and might fall even further. The results are nothing short of miraculous, a prime example of how government can step in at a time of crisis and save the day. Of course, the $700-billion financial bailout fund is still being treated on the campaign trail as if it were the plague. Wacky, huh? From the LAT:

The [Treasury] department repeated its estimate that the cost of all the government's bailout initiatives stemming from the 2008 financial crisis would cost less than 1% of the nation's annual economic output, or about $145 billion. In the savings and loan debacle of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the government spent about 2.4% of U.S. economic output, or gross domestic product, to rescue the industry, the Treasury said.