Look, man, there's a reason this thread is all the way at the bottom of the page. If you actually think that your "literal definition of profit" (that any returned Y in the future, minus X loaned now, exceeds 0) is at all meaningful in a world with inflation, risk of default, and the commonly accepted practice of charging interest, I don't know what else to say.

Please see any [1] of [2] these [3] to understand why it isn't as simple as "Y - X > 0", considering things like where the repayments are coming from, comparing the nominal annualized return to Treasury bond rates, all the fraud that will never be accounted for, etc., etc. Even pro-bailout articles [4] have to include weasel phrases like "on a risk-adjusted basis, even [such and such proposed Y - X] isn’t that big a profit, given the huge downside the government had," speaking directly to my point of how it's hard to properly account for risk, which is what any other lender would have done. Arguably, since there weren't any competitors to the US government for providing bailout money, the interest rate we use to judge whether it was "profitable" should be sky high.

[1]: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395822/overselling-tar...

[2]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/tarp-profit-a-myth_...

[3]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2012/04/25/dont-b...

[4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bailout-high...