Wasn't the government supposed to make money on these bailouts?

How many times did we hear that the government could make a profit? The potential losses are pretty large for just the top 19 banks.

The federal government projected that 19 of the nation's biggest banks could suffer losses of up to $599 billion through the end of next year if the economy performs worse than expected and ordered 10 of them to raise a combined $74.6 billion in capital to cushion themselves.

The much-anticipated stress-test results unleashed a scramble by the weakest banks to find money and a push by the strongest ones to escape the government shadow of taxpayer-funded rescues.

The Federal Reserve's worst-case estimates of banks' total losses and capital shortfalls were smaller than some had feared. Optimists interpreted the Fed's findings as evidence that the worst is over for the industry. But questions remain about the stress tests' rigor, in part since the Fed scaled back some projected losses in the face of pressure from banks. . . . .

The Wall Street Journal nails the whole idea of these stress tests here:

On the other hand, all we really have to go on is the word of the federal employees who looked at the banks and estimated their losses against certain economic assumptions. Did they go easier than they might have, and how much did they bend when the banks fought back? The Fed's overview yesterday claimed they ran a "deliberately stringent test" and pegged potential "adverse"-case losses at the 19 largest banks at $600 billion this year and next.

Yet markets are also full of reports that regulators showed more than a little forbearance, especially after it became clear that President Obama had no desire to go back to Congress to ask for more public money. With only $110 billion or so in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds left uncommitted, it's probably no coincidence that Treasury now sees new net bank capital needs as a manageable $75 billion.

And maybe that optimism will prove correct. Most banks are earning healthy profits again, thanks to a low cost of funds and steep yield curve. They're also taking steps to burn bad debt and clean up their balance sheets. Some banks that got too big during the boom are looking to sell some of their operations in order to raise cash. This is how a financial system shapes itself up under the market pressure of recession, with or without stress tests.

Not that there still aren't plenty of financial risks out there. On the credit side, commercial real estate is ugly and both home mortgage and credit card losses are a long way from receding. While the economy seems to be bottoming out at last, unemployment will keep rising for several months, which will mean more bank losses.

But our biggest question concerns interest-rate risk. Thanks to the Federal Reserve's emergency easing, short-term rates are close to zero. That can't last forever, and the longer the Fed keeps rates this low the more likely it is that rates will have to climb higher down the road to prevent inflation. Remember how the Fed's 1% rate of 2003-2004 rose to 5.25% by 2006 and what that did to housing prices and the cost of bank funds? Yet the Fed didn't disclose the interest-rate projections for 2010 and beyond that it built into its stress test models. . . . .