Taxpayers to make $8 billion off of Citibank?

Joe Weisenthal and Kamelia Angelova note that Tim Geithner's Citibank rescue has turned out to be a pretty good deal for the taxpayers. The government is selling off the stock this week, and netting a tidy profit of $8 billion. And that's not all! Dan Gross thinks we might end up making money on the AIG intervention, and even if we don't, the losses are likely to be very small.

When all is said and done, the financial rescue will probably cost about a percentage point of GDP, and maybe even a bit less than that. Compare that with the savings and loan rescue in the 1980s, which cost 3 percent of GDP, and we're doing okay. Now, the damage the financial crisis did to the actual economy is huge, and I don't want to play that down. But the bailouts themselves are going to end up being a fairly modest contributor.