By B. Thomas Cooper.
The next time someone from the bank calls you during dinner, asking if you intend to make a payment, you may want to ask them how they spent their bailout bucks. Chances are good, they won’t have an answer.
A disturbing new report, released by the panel in charge of tracking how banks are spending literally billions of taxpayer dollars, claims the US Treasury Department has no idea how that money is being spent. The $700-billion ‘Troubled Asset Relief Program’ also referred to by the acronym TARP, has doled out the big bucks to a number of major financial institutions with little or no accountability.
According to the 56-page report, led by Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren, the oversight panel "still does not know what the banks are doing with taxpayer money." The report goes on to state that 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.
"I'll be perfectly blunt with you” Warren remarked during a recent interview on "Good Morning America." I'm shocked that we have to ask these questions, but what I will say is I'm not giving up on this,"
For reasons never clearly articulated, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson originally insisted the financial institutions receiving taxpayer monies should not face any oversight or accountability for how the money is spent, a proposal most Americans found unacceptable. Paulson, has been the US Treasury Secretary since July, 2006.
President George W. Bush, who leaves office on Jan. 20, has been noticeably silent on the subject.
