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