US lawmakers to insist on rescue fund accountability (Feinstein, Snowe, Pelosi)

12/26/08

[Libloather]

Link only - US lawmakers to insist on rescue fund accountability

[the invisib1e hand]

the left has its own, fluid lexicon. “Accountability,” in this case, means something more like “accessibility,” I suspect.

[the invisib1e hand]

Banks are losing citizen's money. GM & Ford are not.

Yet.

[AndyJackson]

Banks are losing citizen's money.

And that makes it ok for the pubbies to stonewall on how the loot is being spent.

[Robert A Cook PE]

No, no.

Bush was dead stupid to begin promoting these bailouts when HE panicked (was panicked ?) into DEMANDING immediate action in mid-September, early October, mid-October ....

Bush is at fault - But I simply can’t tell you WHO pushed him into “Panicruptcy”

THAT person (the one who convinced Bush in Sept and Oct that we needed immediate action (just before the election) to “bailout Wall Street”) is the group or person at fault for “losing” the election to Obama.

[HawaiianGecko]

"If they come up with another SarBox type law, Obama’s 3 million new jobs can all be auditors."

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with that.  I can speak anecdotally for a very large corporation that has studied the effects of SOX on their IT department and it is absolutely astounding.  Projects that may take only a month for a local contractor to perform ten years ago now have to be off shored to New Deli because SOX blows it into an eight month contract and it's no longer economically viable to keep the project in house.

[wolfcreek]

I ‘d like to know where the money is going myself.

I actually mean it.

[HawaiianGecko]

"And that makes it ok for the pubbies to stonewall on how the loot is being spent."  My comment doesn't say that.  How the money is being spent and why it is being spent are simply not the same thing.

[going hot]

How the money is being spent and why it is being spent are simply not the same thing.

How it is being spent is by the dump truck load. Why it is being spent is the same old story, to purchase more votes.

[AndyJackson]

How the money is being spent and why it is being spent are simply not the same thing.

Oh but I disagree. If I don't know the how, I certainly cannot concur in the why, whatever excuses Paulson and his friends offer up.

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

Keep Your Damn Monkeys

http://philoculture.blogspot.com/2008/10/keep-your-damn-monkeys.html

[Navy Patriot]

Central planning, command economy, Marx and Lenin would be proud.

[unixfox]

DON’T Trust until you can VERIFY!

[HawaiianGecko]

"THAT person (the one who convinced Bush in Sept and Oct that we needed immediate action (just before the election) to “bailout Wall Street”) is the group or person at fault for “losing” the election to Obama."

I certainly have to agree with that.  I also don't know who that person is, and it very well might have been Bush himself.  The timing was horrible and I feel it has more to do with not going down as another Hoover than anything else.  What amazes me in retrospect, and not because of any profound financial ability of my own, is that anyone actually thought this bail out was going to work. 

We have spent a huge amount of money with no noticeable effect and it appears we are going to spend yet another sizeable chunk with no real documentation or proof that it will have any more effect than the last round.

From everything I have read recently, no government program has ever had any positive effect in reversing, halting or even slowing a recession.  With Bernanke being a student of The Great Depression, I'm surprised he actually boarded this boat.

[bimbo]

OK - let’s start with grand jury investigations or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac right now!

That won't be done ... those GSEs are the private domain of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

[Madame Dufarge]

You're exactly right. Money is fungible and it should be easy enough for the banks to show where the money went. I suspect the stonewalling right now is to give themselves time to "correct" their bookkeeping now that the heat is on.

Unless the banks are required to cut non-bailout related expenditures, it's all just kabuki theater.

And the Democrats' posturing about accountability is laughable, in light of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac debacle. Will they be requiring the same kind of accounting "rules"?

[Robert A Cook PE]

” Aye, that's the rub” -

Because we really have NOT “spent” the money that was “immediately needed” and was an “emergency” in that first week in October. We were told that “hours mattered” and that emergency sessions (without accountability” were needed over the weekend to get the bailout bill through.

But then the vote happened - and the money authorized, but the Fed’s claimed they needed contracts to write contracts to authorize contractors to write the checks to the Wall Street banks. Very, very little of those billions has actually gotten to banks and Wall Street yet.

The AIG money in mid-Sept? Don't know. It was a single institution and probably got there.

Mortgage money guarantees a few days later? How many have actually been processed to the final users and banks? We were ALWAYS told of how many “faced” bankcrupcy and how many “faced” foreclosure. But those were liebrally-salted views and numbers to CREATE the crisis, not solve it or identify the crisis. (For example, I “face” foreclosure if I fail to make payments for several months in a row - but I'm not behind now. However, even my situation could be propagandized in a liberal media.

[kingu]

Gosh, they thought about this a couple months after passing this monster? Gosh, glad they took on that Republican Congress, and Republican Senate, forcing them to finally... Oh, right, forgot, the most unpopular congress in US History is being run by the liberals, who are shoving idiotic legislation down our throats.

The truth is, no, this isn't the case of a broken clock being right twice a day, but Congress reaching for another toy to bash corporations (that don't contribute enough to them) with. There's no accountability for the money Acorn spends, nor will there be any thought given to accountability for this - it will just be something for them to wave around committee, wondering why banks didn't increase minority loans. why they racistly wrote off a lot of loans to the under-employed, etc.

Any question if this is a case of wanting to know how our money was being spent, it should have been quashed by their grilling of Paulson, wondering why he hasn't handed out every penny already, why he's not done enough to reward companies that are fighting global warming, etc, etc. Everything Pelosi does is agenda driven.

[Condor51]

"It is outrageous that those institutions cannot - or will not - provide information on how they are spending billions of taxpayer dollars," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.

Yeah you evil Bankers, how dare you. No accountability with taxpayer mooney, harrumph!!

Only Congress can do that.

[dfwgator]

Yeah you evil Bankers, how dare you. No accountability with taxpayer mooney, harrumph!!

"I didn't get a 'harrumph' out of that guy. You watch your a$$."