CBO says Us has taken $640 bln loss on TARP so far

The Congressional Budget office says the US government has taken a $64 bln loss on the first $250 bln in TARP bailout. Most Americans already see the $700 bln as having gone to ” money heaven”, so “only” losing $64 bln would be a good thing to the man in the street. We assume these are mark-to-model projections by the CBO as the securities held by the Treasury are not publicly traded.

Most of the price action this afternoon has been confined to Cable and EUR/GBP as uncertainty surrounds the UK banking sector in particular today. The US banks are a close second as an area of concern. All this argues for continued risk aversion.