Recent Blog Posts
-
Smoking Lingerie Leads to Lawsuit
Nov 23 20093:11 pm EDT -
Oops
Nov 23 200912:01 am EDT -
The Era of the Renminbi Is at Hand
Nov 20 20092:55 pm EDT -
Computer Glitch Snarls Air Traffic
Nov 19 200910:29 am EDT -
Dollar Doldrums? What Dollar Doldrums?
Nov 19 20098:48 am EDT -
American Express Makes a Revolutionary Deal
Nov 18 200912:05 pm EDT -
Calpers Puts Pressure on Private Equity Funding and Fees
Nov 18 200910:27 am EDT -
Madoff Makes Millions (for Others)
Nov 18 20096:04 am EDT -
Lazard Looks Within Its Ranks for New Chief
Nov 17 20091:44 pm EDT -
A Brutal Morning for Geithner
Nov 17 20098:02 am EDT
Tattling on TARP
Where are billions in taxpayer dollars intended for the financial services bailout actually going? A new report says we shouldn't be looking at the Treasury Department for answers.
The report comes from a five-member, bipartisan, congressional oversight panel tasked with keeping tabs on the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The panel knocked Treasury for its apparent inability to track TARP dollars, and it criticized the department's handling of the nation's housing foreclosure crisis. None of the TARP funds have been used to help troubled mortgage holders.
"Treasury needs to be clear as to what, if anything, it has done, and if it insists on taking credit for private sector efforts, it must explain what 'help' means," the draft report said, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The head of the panel, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, took to the morning TV talk shows to explain.
"I'm shocked that we have to ask these questions," Warren said on ABC's Good Morning America, "but what I will say is that I'm not giving up on this. The best news is that these questions have gotten a lot of attention and a lot of people are demanding answers and when a lot of people demand answers, things start to change."
Warren said that Treasury simply wasn't tracking what was happening with the money. "They didn't tell the banks what they had to do in order to get the money. It might be used for lending, it might be used to buy other banks ... Or it might just be stuffed in vaults and left there," she said.
"I think that Congress may want to take a very hard look at that question," she added. "Ultimately, we don't have a badge, don't have a gun. It's up to Congress."
by J. Jennings Moss






