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The Spectacle Blog
The Treasury Department apparently doesn’t know. But as a friend of mine observes when he pulls out his credit card to buy something he can’t afford: “it’s only money!”
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.
I don’t expect the Obama administration to be any less wasteful than the Bush administration. But could the new crowd at least try to account for how the money is being used?
View all comments (6) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Doug Bandow
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Bert| 1.9.09 @ 9:43AM
No, the new crowd can't account for how the money is being used. This is one of the central problems with having the federal government invest in private companies. The "taxpayer's" money was used to buy equity and debt investments in private companies. The money is not the taxpayer's. The stocks, warrants, bonds, etc. are what the taxpayer's own. Try buying a share of stock in Bank of America and then demanding that BofA tell you how it is using "your" money. That's not how it works. You purchased a security. The right to manage the company did not come with it. Management of public companies is vested in the Board of Directors. You can cast your vote in the BoD election, but that's pretty much it. The only things the company has to tell you about how it is spending its funds are those required to be disclosed by SEC and NYSE rules, and Sarbanes-Oxley, and the myriad of other regulations that govern financial disclosures of public companies. People need to grow up. The government invested in companies. This is a spectacularly bad idea, but not because control of the companies didn't come with the investments. Conservatives, of all people, should not want companies having to answer to the government regarding capital allocations. The solution is not more transparency; the solution is to bar the government from forcing taxpayers to invest in companies in which they would not have voluntarily chosen to invest.
Oh yeah. And if the investments go up in value, do you really believe that "taxpayers" will make money? Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy say, "sorry," that money will belong to the same idiotic Congress to spend however it chooses. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to be used to lessen your tax burden. After all, it would be unpatriotic to pay lower taxes . . . .
Dandapani| 1.9.09 @ 11:54AM
Banks are using the money to buy other banks. It's a travesty. Honest and well run banks are being dwarfed by ever enlarging bad banks using tax payer money to enrich themselves.
james23| 1.9.09 @ 1:05PM
What Bert said. "The solution is not more transparency; the solution is to bar the government from forcing taxpayers to invest in companies in which they would not have voluntarily chosen to invest.
"
I would add, every time I read a story about the Bailout-palooza, I end up pondering the passiveness of the American public. Is there anything the government could do that would get this generation riled up enough to, say, toss a few crates of government tea into the harbor?
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