For all you Treasury and Fed watchers out there, you may want to check out “The First Report of the Congressional Oversight Panel for Economic Stabilization,” which was published yesterday.
Here are some highlights from the introduction, alone:
• “The unemployment rate is the highest it has been in 14 years. In the past three months, 1.2 million Americans lost their jobs, 533,000 in November 2008 alone.”
• “One in 10 mortgage holders is now in default.”
• “More than 200,00 families and small businesses filed for bankruptcy in protection in the past two months.”
If that’s not enough to get you down, the rest of the report just might. To say that the panel has been unimpressed by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is more than a bit of an understatement, perhaps the real value, though, in the no frills documentation of how Treasury has zigged and zagged in response to the flood of bad economic news.
It’s laid out in the form of 10 questions the panel asks of Treasury. These penetrating questions include:
1. What is the Treasury’s strategy?
2. Is the strategy working?
3. Is the strategy helping to reduce foreclosures?
4. What have financial institutions done with taxpayer money received so far?
5. Is the public getting a fair deal?
6. What is Treasury doing to help the American family?
7. is Treasury imposing reforms on financial institutions that are taking taxpayer money?
8. How is Treasury deciding which institutions receive the money?
9. What is the scope of Treasury’s statutory authority?
10. Is Treasury looking ahead?
11. How do you spell TARP?
OK, I made that last one up, but on first reading, the report attempts to retroactively create the accountability and metrics that just about anyone else would demand before shelling out $350 billion (to date) and potentially as much as $700 billion.
Better late than never, I guess.
It’s worth a read. Click here to download the PDF.
Tags: Federal Reserve, TARP, Treasury
