November 10, 2008—
Want to hear crickets chirping? Ask Washington who's keeping an eye on its $700 billion economic bailout.
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Party leaders on Capitol Hill were supposed to name a special oversight commission to check how the bailout was using its legal authorities, according to the law. But over a month has passed without a single name put forward.
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"No," said a spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., when asked if her office had been talking with others about the panel. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., did not respond to requests for comment.
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Meanwhile, the biggest watchdog in town Congress' Government Accountability Office (GAO) placed large "Help Wanted" ads in the Washington Post and New York Times, indicating it may lack the manpower to properly scrutinize the crush of bailout activity.
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Experts outside government are alarmed. "This poses every potential problem that Iraq has: corruption, conflicts of interest, theft, and waste of government resources," financial policy expert and investment firm partner Robert Dugger recently told Government Executive magazine. "It's Blackwater, Halliburton, and KBR, but right here at home."
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In at least one instance, a company attempted to assert its own conflict-of-interest rules, only to be shot down by the Treasury Department.
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A review of contracts issued by the Treasury's new Office of Financial Stability finds it has blacked out key information total spending figures, names of key personnel, experts' hourly rates.
Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.
Also see, Fed refusing to identify recipients of $2 TRILLION in loans!
Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose (Update2)
By Mark Pittman, Bob Ivry and Alison Fitzgerald
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.
``The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that's a big problem,'' said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. ``In a liquid market, this wouldn't matter, but we're not. The market is very nervous and very thin.''
Bloomberg News has requested details of the Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure.
The Fed made the loans under terms of 11 programs, eight of them created in the past 15 months, in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
``It's your money; it's not the Fed's money,'' said billionaire Ted Forstmann, senior partner of Forstmann Little & Co. in New York. ``Of course there should be transparency.''
It sounds like it's time to enter the temple to upset the tables of the moneychangers.
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