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Warren Panel: Treasury Eroding Confidence It Seeks To Restore
More from the report of the Congressional Oversight Panel, chaired by Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren, on Treasury's spending of TARP funds:
First a bit of backstory. In its first report issued last month, the panel asked a series of questions about what Treasury was doing with the money -- questions it was unable to answer because the department didn't appear to have adequately tracked its own spending.
Late last month, Treasury issued a response that provided almost no new information whatsoever. As we noted, one paragraph appeared twice, in virtually identical form, in response to two different questions posed by Warren.
Now this new report finds that the problem is a long way from being fixed:
The Panel still does not know what the banks are doing with taxpayer money.
It continues:
The recent refusal of certain private financial institutions to provide any accounting of how they are using taxpayer money undermines public confidence ... For Treasury to advance funds to these institutions without requiring more transparency further erodes the very confidence Treasury seeks to restore
Josh
Zachary
You go get 'em honey! (not you Zack, Lizzy Warren)
Can we call it the Warren Commission just to add confusion?
January 9, 2009 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hank's first draft of the TARP program included a provision to the effect that the Treasury Secretary would have full control over the distribution of funds, and that his decisions were to be final and could not be challenged in any court of law. i.e. "Trust me"
Seems that Congress was in such a hurry to pass the bill that they did not ask enough questions, and that included the two Presidential candidates.
January 9, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Astounding Chutzpah from Treasury. Facing a massive economic failure that they enabled, the best they can do his help pals steal a little more while teetering on the edge of the abyss.
January 9, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
The honest answer here is - Mr. Paulson and Treasury purposely did not require Banks and Wall Street buddies to "account" for any of this money - on purpose. Purposeful Deceit and Theft - of taxpayer dollars.
Thank you Elizabeth Warren for trying to do the right thing - for taxpayers and consumers. You are truly deserving of many honors.
Thank you TPM for highlighting this important report. Great work!
January 9, 2009 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
If Bu$h cared so much about his legacy, he should have had the balls to either bring P.E. Obama and his transition team onboard on his Administration to get a handle on the situation or abdicate his Administrations remaining days to P.E. Obama so work on the recovery could get started before the economy fell into the abyss. I suspect by the time P.E. Obama gets to the Oval Office there may not be enough time to steer the economy away fro a total collapse. So much for Bu$h's legacy - he's making Hoover look like a Saint.
January 9, 2009 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
The “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008” (Short Title), according to Section 2. Purposes: “provides authority to the Treasury Secretary to restore liquidity and stability to the U.S. financial system and to ensure the economic well-being of Americans.”
Section 101. Purchases of Troubled Assets. “Requires the Treasury Secretary to establish guidelines and policies to carry out the purposes of this Act” and “includes provisions to prevent unjust enrichment by participants of the program.”
It does not sound as if the Treasury is meeting either of these requirements! Specifically the "unjust enrichment".
Is it still 11 more days until the rascals are oficially kicked out?
January 9, 2009 2:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
The banks are paranoid about public disclosure about the true state of their balance sheets, and because they're closer to the Fed than (relatively) mortgage borrowers, the Fed listens to them.
The current economics fetish with investment capital (as opposed to more fixed forms of capital) means that both the Fed (and this administration) fail to see that in a global economy, the only people able to re-start national-level demand are consumers.
Remember us? We're the ones whose confidence is being undermined by the secrecy of the bailout.
Me, I'm thinking about investing in a larger mattress to hide my money under.
January 9, 2009 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've come to believe that Paulson is a crook on a par with any of the many war criminals in the Bush administration. And he will not change his ways between now and January 20th.
January 9, 2009 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Putty you are correct. Crook.
Kinda reminds me of crooks on the Titanic. While the boat is sinking, they are busy looting the passengers and safes. When it becomes apparent they are going down, they go and shoot regular joes to get to the lifeboats and will take it solo and deny anyone else getting in the lifeboat.
We all assume that as things get worse, people like paulson and buusch and TheCheney will grow a heart, or start to have compassion....when actually they just get more vicious and desperate and inhuman.
January 9, 2009 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I believe Olberman will prove to be right when he says that someday the Wall Street bailout will be called "Why Daddy Went to Jail."
January 9, 2009 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
What astonishes me is that thus far Congress has been behaving as if it's powerless in the face of such outrageous behavior. You'd think the phrase "Contempt of Congress" would already be in the air.
January 9, 2009 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
When they act powerless I'd always bet that that's just a way of achieving their real goal while still being able to argue that it wasn't their fault.
January 9, 2009 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
The reason we are in this mess is the undue haste with which Congress acted in passing this program. They were panicked into a "do something, anything" mode by Paulson and Bush. If you think that could never happen under Obama, you just haven't been paying attention.
Even MoveOn is urging that we phone our Congressional representatives demanding that they act in equal haste to pass whatever Obama proposes. Are people suddenly insane or just hit with a stupidity virus?
We are no longer campaigning for Obama. Now it is our job to keep him doing what needs to be done. So, lets stop with the cheerleading and start doing our real job again.
Sorry for the rant, but MoveOn really ticked me off.
January 9, 2009 10:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wish they would apply the same sense of urgency and "must pass as presented" a health care bill that would extend medicare coverage to all Americans and thus create a national health insurance plan that would serve the people's interests instead of serving the people up to the special interests. But instead, Obama has chosen Tom Daschle, one of the most ineffective majority leaders of our time, to get healthcare through the Congress. Not encouraging.
The problem and truth is that the Democrats really are just flailing about and don't know what they are really doing regarding the stimulus as well as other immediate crises whether on the Obama team or Capitol Hill. This is all the more reason NOT to pass legislation willy nilly but to actually consider what we're doing before just throwing a trillion dollars out there and hoping it has the desired effect.
January 10, 2009 3:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
The point of "acting in equal haste" has long since passed. I think move on's point is that the Dem leadership has known that they were going to have to pass some BIG economic legislation for the last 2 months, and they have apparently made no movement on carefully writing a bill and providing for appropriate protections for the taxpayers. I mean where the heck have they been? They've had the last 2 months to get this put together, and they're still dicking around with it and saying that it won't be finished until mid-february! WTF?! Every day they let pass with no urgency is another several thousand jobs lost. The TARP abortion they passed in hysteria in the space of a week. They've already had 2+ months to put together good legislation. At what point are they planning to start?? Ir should have been ready (or nearly) for BO's signature at inauguration.
January 10, 2009 1:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Regardless of what anyone thinks about this post, here it is...
Anyone can just LOOK and LISTEN to Paulson and see and hear the man is a total crook and con man. He is obviously hiding some huge guilt just by his body language and his voice.
The Congress had every opportunity to write tough restrictions on this money, but they didn't. Allowing a few people to dole out these huge sums of money without oversight is criminal in itself, not to mention ignorant and stupid.
Bush and Cheney raped the public soooo bad, made their fat cat buddies soooo much richer and destructed the image of the United States around the world. They deserve prison, at least.
January 10, 2009 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
No argument here about what Bush and Cheney did, and continue to do down to the last gasp of their feeble administration. The problem is if you look even casually at the hands of the Democrats in Congress, the red stuff you see is blood.
January 10, 2009 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink