A scathing new report by a congressional watchdog panel blames the Treasury Department for failing to track how banks are spending taxpayer money provided through the government's $700 billion financial rescue package, also known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.The panel, which has been charged with overseeing TARP and is led by Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren, said in its 56-page report that it "still does not know what the banks are doing with taxpayer money."
By investing in banks that have refused "to provide any accounting of how they are using taxpayer money," the Treasury Department has "eroded" public confidence, the report stated.
The panel also asked whether the Treasury Department, which has allocated more than $350 billion from the rescue package so far, failed to comply with Congress' instructions to tackle the country's foreclosure crisis.
The department took "no steps to use any of [the $700 billion rescue package] to alleviate the foreclosure crisis," and that "raises questions about whether Treasury has complied with Congress' intent that Treasury develop a 'plan that seeks to maximize assistance for homeowners,'" the report said.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Congressional panel: We have no idea how banks used bailout money.
Gee, who didn't see this coming? From ABC News:
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Didn't we already do this during the "reconstruction" of Iraq?
It would be much more satisfying if we put the $350 billion in a massive pile on the Mall in Washington, DC and just torched the whole damn thing. It's the same thing as giving it to these banks--it all goes up in smoke (at least if we burn it, we know it doesn't end up making the really rich even richer at our expense).
Really, how stupid is it to hand over OUR money to the financial wizards who destroyed our financial markets in the first place WITHOUT any preconditions or oversight?
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