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Warren On Tracking Bailout Funds: "This Isn't Rocket Science"
During her interview on CNN, Elizabeth Warren got to spend a little less time dealing with inane knee-jerk responses from anchors, and a little more time explaining the crux of the issue: that the Treasury Department isn't tracking its bailout spending.
Some excerpts:
This isn't rocket science. This isn't some strange thing we're asking for. If you're gonna take that much money from American taxpayers, you've gotta have the banks tell what they're going to do with it. We have to have some way of telling if its working. and if you don't have accountability, if you don't have metrics in place, you're really just kind of handing it out there and hoping for the best.
And:
Treasury did not say: tell us what you're going to do with the money. Tell us how you used it. That just hasn't happened. There's no basic accountability in the system.
Warren also laid out the intriguing idea of establishing a product safety commission for financial products, just as we have for toasters, car seats, and other consumer products.
And she ended with an Eliot Ness-like pledge to keep up the fight. Asked by CNN's Tony Harris whether she'd continue to try to track the bailout spending, she replied, with brio: "You bet!"
Here's the whole thing:
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Josh
Zachary
Accountability? We don't need no stinkin' accountability.
Remember, this is the Bush administration we're talking about.
January 9, 2009 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
At least the CNN interviewers asked intelligent questions, listened to the answers, and reacted like human beings, unlike the CNBC tools.
And I'm impressed that CNN gave 11 minutes to Warren. That's a far cry from the wham-bam news coverage of the networks.
January 9, 2009 10:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I love her. I wish she had more power over this f*ckery.
January 10, 2009 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
While it is true that money is fungible, there is no reason why the financial institutions cannot report where an amount of money equal to their "bailout" has been spent - other than that they don't want to admit that this bailout was a complete ripoff.
.
January 11, 2009 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suspect that the bulk of Tarp I went to China. China held vast sums of senior Fannie Mae debt and had to be paid or all hell was going to break loose. But don't wait for the politicians to admit to that. "China owns US" may have once made for good ecomonics but it will always make for lousy politics.
January 12, 2009 12:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
YOU ARE CORRECT SIR
January 12, 2009 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Central Planning? Requiring accountability to banks who are supposedly on the verge of collapse is too akin to Communism? What a joke!
This is blood money and Obama is going to make the next payment. We are running up a ridiculous debt and China is accumulating all of our cash and supplying up with cheap, toxic products. Wake up America!
Obama isn't even going to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate violations of the Constitution by the Bush Administration. This should not be a surprise to those of us who are watching Obama. He voted for telecom immunity and that proved to me his allegiance to the status quo.
Change is not coming America. Obama is doling out the second $350 BILLION and add another $1 TRILLION in "stimulus" and we start digging that hole deeper and deeper.
January 12, 2009 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink