The potential costs of TARP

TEXT OF STORY

Steve Chiotakis: Today is the deadline for banks who wish to apply for money through TARP, that’s the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But help from Uncle Sam could come at a price, as Ashley Milne-Tyte reports.

Ashley Milne-Tyte: After Secretary Paulson announced the plan, banks large and small said they wanted the option to sign up. But it’s not clear how many of them actually have.

Matt Slaughter teaches at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. He says the need for cash isn’t something banks necessarily want to advertise to depositors and shareholders. An injection of capital would let them shore up their balance sheets and lend again. But he says there could be disadvantages, too:

Matt Slaughter: There’s a potential cost to the companies of having the government be involved in a much more direct way in their business, that’s sort of hard to quantify what that might mean in the future. But we already see that some of the major banks receiving capital injections from the government are now being looked at very differently.

Take company compensation. The government’s made clear it doesn’t want its money going on big bonuses and golden parachutes. Slaughter says whatever happens, banks can be sure they won’t get a free lunch.

In New York, I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace.