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In its latest report on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the Congressional Budget Office dropped the estimated cost of the program substantially. The CBO's estimate is now $25 billion. That's a far cry from the estimate of $66 billion in August, or $109 billion from the CBO's March report. There is some explanation for the cost trending downward at the CBO's Director's Blog : It was not apparent when the TARP was created two years ago that the costs would be this low. At that time, the financial system was in a precarious condition, and the transactions envisioned and ultimately undertaken through the TARP engendered substantial financial risk for the federal government. However, the cost has come out toward the low end of the range of possible outcomes anticipated when the program was launched. Because the financial system stabilized and then improved, the amount of funds used by the TARP was well below the $700 billion initially authorized, and the outcomes of most transactions made through the TARP were favorable for the federal government. Some more specific reasons: -Additional repurchases of preferred stock by recipients of TARP funds; -A lower estimated cost for assistance to AIG and to the automotive industry; -Lower expected participation in mortgage programs; -The elimination of the opportunity to use TARP funds for new purposes (because of the passage of time and the provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act). Read the full report here .

Bloomberg has released the results of a new national poll on Americans' attitudes toward Wall Street, bankers, and regulation of financial institutions. The poll shows that Americans are not too fond of anyone at this moment::bankers, insurance companies, Wall Street, corporate executives. And while they favor "punishing banks," nearly 70% say they want the government to regulate consumer protection through currently available means, rather than establish a new agency. John McCormick and Alison Vekshin report: As Democrats and Republicans seek to tap populist ire, the poll shows there may be political advantage in taking on big financial institutions such as Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp. , and New York’s Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The majority of poll participants -- 56 percent -- say big financial companies are more interested in enriching themselves at the expense of ordinary people, while 40 percent say such firms play a vital role in enabling the economy to grow. At the same time, Americans are divided over the scope of government regulation. More than 40 percent of Americans say the government has gone too far in measures to fix the financial industry; 37 percent say it hasn’t done enough. Almost six out of 10 people say Wall Street hasn’t gone far enough on its own to protect against future emergencies. “Anything the government gets their fingers in, they mess it up,” said poll participant Norman White, 60, a community college electronics instructor who lives in Colfax, Louisiana . “I don’t have a very high opinion of the government running anything.” Read Wall Street Despised in Poll Showing Majority Want Regulation here .

Joseph E. Stiglitz , Bert Koenders , and Jose Antonio Ocampo discussed possible reform of the international monetary and financial system at the Carnegie Council on September 30. Stiglitz chaired the UN Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, and he told the audience that the multi-national commission's findings "provide a deeper analysis of the causes of the crisis and a long-term agenda of what to do about it than, for instance, what has come out of the G-20 communiqués and reports." One of the commission's concerns over the response to the global economic crisis, in the United States in particular, is consolidation in the banking sector. As Stiglitz said at the Carnegie Council: The problem of too-big-to-fail banks has become much worse since the beginning of the crisis. While we're making some strides in trying to improve things, we've made some things much worse. It's worse because we have bigger banks, more concentration, but also because we've increased the moral hazard problem. We've introduced in many countries around the world a new concept that never had any role in economics before: banks that are too big to be financially resolved, where you protect the bondholders and shareholders as well as the institution and the depositors. Here is an excerpt from the panel discussion: To watch the full session, click here . And you can read the Report of the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System here .