Via twitter, via Right Org, comes this very cool way of tracking the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program investments from Ethisphere — almost like an S&P index of stocks of publicly traded firms that have received money from TARP:

For the week ended February 13, 2009, the aggregate Ethisphere TARP Index is down a total of $86.5 billion, out of the original investment principal of $195.5 billion for a total balance of $109 billion. However, the Adjusted Ethisphere TARP Index, which excludes the calamity investments, has an aggregate loss $27.6 billion as of the week ended February 13, 2009, bringing the original investment principal down to $68 billion.

I remember telling a reporter, around the time the TARP program was unveiled, that it shouldn’t be too hard to track the performance of publicly traded companies, and that Treasury should post the information online. If a Yahoo! Finance page can show, up the minute, the performance of Bank of America, how hard could it be to set up a TARP portfolio tracking system?