Friday, January 09, 2009

No Ability, No Standards, No Answers

That's what the first report on the TARP concludes. The first report is by the congressional oversight panel headed by Harvard's Elizabeth Warren. To quote the WSJ article, "The report faults Treasury on a variety of fronts: having no ability to ensure banks lend the money they have received from the government; having no standards for measuring the success of the program; and for ignoring or offering incomplete answers to panel questions." I'd say that's a fairly damning indictment.

Basically, it sounds as though the panel thinks the Treasury does not know what it is doing. True, these are uncharted waters, but you have to wonder why you seldom hear the words "mortgage, refinance, individual" coming from the Treasury.

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