SIGTARP

Or, “Every Government Entity Spawns At Least Three More Government Entities”  Ω

When the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was created under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, Congress enacted several independent oversight entities and processes to ensure accountability and protect taxpayers including the Congressional Oversight Panel, GAO oversight and audits at Treasury, and an Inspector General to monitor the Treasury Secretary’s decisions. Mr. Barofsky presented SIGTARP’s third quarterly report to Congress and their first audit report on how recipients have used TARP funds at the hearing.

Where has all the TARP money gone? Looong time passin’……

The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“SIGTARP”) was created by Section 121 of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (“EESA”). Under EESA, SIGTARP has the responsibility, among other things, to conduct, supervise, and coordinate audits and investigations of the purchase, management, and sale of assets under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”). SIGTARP is required to report quarterly to Congress to describe SIGTARP’s activities and to provide certain information about TARP over that preceding quarter. EESA gives SIGTARP the authorities listed in Section 6 of the Inspector General Act of 1978, including the power to obtain documents and other information from Federal agencies and to subpoena reports, documents, and other information from persons or entities outside of Government. EESA provided SIGTARP with an initial allocation of $50 million to fund its operations. The Special Inspector General, Neil M. Barofsky, was confirmed by the Senate on December 8, 2008, and sworn into office on December 15, 2008.

Page 9 of the SIGTARP Quarterly Report reads:  Ω

Although SIGTARP understands Treasury’s need to balance the public’s transparency interests, on one hand, with the interests of the participants and the desire to have wide participation in the programs, on the other, Treasury’s default position should always be to require more disclosure rather than less and to provide the investors in TARP — the American taxpayers — as much information about what is being done with their money as possible. Unfortunately, in rejecting SIGTARP’s basic transparency recommendations, TARP has become a program in which taxpayers (i) are not being told what most of the TARP recipients are doing with their money, (ii) have still not been told how much their substantial investments are worth, and (iii) will not be told the full details of how their money is being invested. In SIGTARP’s view, the very credibility of TARP (and thus in large measure its chance of success) depends on whether Treasury will commit, in deed as in word, to operate TARP with the highest degree of transparency possible.

Wonder how much work they have….

SIGTARP’s Investigations Division has developed rapidly and is quickly becoming a sophisticated white-collar investigative agency. Through June 30, 2009, SIGTARP has opened 37 and has 35 ongoing criminal and civil investigations. These investigations include complex issues concerning suspected accounting fraud, securities fraud, insider trading, mortgage servicer misconduct, mortgage fraud, public corruption, false statements, and tax investigations. Two of SIGTARP’s investigations have recently become public.

And in other news, Obama and Team are going to pay for their health bill with all the waste they’ll eliminate from Medicaid/care. Ω

Obama told a joint session of Congress Wednesday night that “reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.” –I’m convinced.

And then he said “Let there be Dark”, and there was Dark.