Last Friday I raised the question of how much funding is left in the TARP. This is now a broader discussion involving Secretary Geithner and the Treasury staff, the General Accounting Office, the Wall Street Journal and ABC News. I’d like to review the progression of this topic over the past six days and see if I can clarify what I think is going on. I will be rigorous in this post, and will follow up later today with a more speculative post about what I surmise is going on inside the Administration that is contributing to this confusion.

• Last Friday I wrote that I thought the Administration was running out of money in the TARP. I wrote then, “They have $33 B — $58 B before they hit the $700 B barrier.”
• That same day I showed that the Administration has been laying the groundwork for another TARP request since February, and using a $250 B number as a placeholder.
• Last Sunday, George Stephanopolous asked Secretary Geithner about this. The Secretary replied, “George, we have roughly $135 B left of uncommitted resources. Less is out the door, but in terms of, if you look at what’s not committed yet, it’s roughly, you know, $135 billion.
• Monday, Maya Jackson Randall reported in the Wall Street Journal that “The Treasury Department said it has about $134.5 billion left in its financial-rescue fund, giving the Obama administration a cushion as it implements expensive programs aimed at unlocking credit markets and boosting ailing industries.”
• Tuesday morning I tried to reconcile this $100 B gap. I tried to show how one could interpret, or maybe reinterpret, the commitments previously made by the Administration over the past two months to justify the Secretary’s figure. I think and hope that I showed a plausible explanation for why the Secretary thinks he could say such a large number.
• That same day (Tuesday), GAO came up with the same $32.6 B figure, that I described last Friday. GAO correctly labels that figure, “Maximum announced program funding level.”
• Wednesday morning, Mr. Stephanopolous posted about this difference between Secretary Geithner’s Sunday morning number on the […]