U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog: Obama supports stronger TARP oversight

On behalf of President-elect Obama, economics advisor Larry Summers has sent Congressional leaders a letter urging better TARP oversight as a condition of the new administration's support for releasing the second half of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. One of the wackier findings of the reports from the Congressional TARP oversight panel chaired by Professor Elizabeth Warren is that the Bush Treasury Department doesn't have and never had a plan for tracking bank use of the billions of dollars of taxpayer money it's been giving out in big chunks. Findings of the January 9th report:

The report highlights four key areas that demand special attention:

1. Bank Accountability—the Panel still does not know what banks are doing with the taxpayer money they have received.
2. Transparency—confidence in markets can only be restored when information is transparent and reliable, but we still have no clear mechanism to ensure transparent and accurate asset valuation and no confidence that the dangers posed by toxic assets have been addressed.
3. Foreclosures—Treasury has yet to take any steps to use TARP funds or develop plans to “maximize assistance to homeowners,” as required by law.
4. Overall Strategy—Treasury's shifting explanations for its purposes and the tools used have exacerbated the Panel's concern that Treasury does not have a coherent overall strategy and goals for use of the TARP funds.