The government got back more money than it loaned out? Does that qualify as an accounting trick now?
Here's an accounting trick for you. Why don't you give me a $1000 loan for twenty years, and since you don't know me, the risk of default is, let's say, pretty high. I'll repay you $1001 in 2036—heck, just to be generous, I'll do it in inflation-adjusted dollars. When I do that, I will be happy to have you tell me about the "profit" that you made off of your investment.
No one's making value judgements about that, it's just a statement of undeniably true fact. That is the literal definition of profit, and the US government made a profit on the loan.
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...
