I am talking about the losses WE the taxpayers are suffering that did not come from Elizabeth Warren but is a matter of public record.
http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2009/07/06/daily90.html?surround=lfn&ana=test
The Treasury Department is selling stock warrants back to TARP recipients for only 66 percent of fair market value, according to a report issued Friday by the Congressional Oversight Panel.
Through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as TARP, the Treasury Department purchased preferred stock and warrants from banks in an effort to prop up lending.
Warrants, which give the holder the right to buy a company’s stock at some point in the future for a specific price, presented a lot of potential upside for taxpayers, should bank stock prices rise above the face value of the warrants.
Many banks have sought to buy back their preferred shares and warrants from Treasury.
“Because the warrants that accompanied TARP assistance represent the only opportunity for the taxpayer to participate directly in the increase in the share prices of banks made possible by public money, the price at which the warrants are sold is critical,” the panel said.
The panel, charged with determining whether taxpayers are receiving maximum benefit from the TARP, conducted its own valuation of the warrants the Treasury holds. It found that the 11 banks that have repurchased their warrants from the Treasury for a total amount that the panel estimates to be only 66 percent of current market value, shortchanging taxpayers by $10 million.
From your article (and all the business journals and mags it was distributed to): The panel, charged with determining whether taxpayers are receiving maximum benefit from the TARP, conducted its own valuation of the warrants the Treasury holds.
Simply put, she and the "panel" slapped their own (100% maturity value) theoretical valuation instead of real current bond/warrants market / "discount" valuation that people actually trade in. At the panel's "valuation" nobody would buy back the warrants and Treasury would be sitting on them instead of getting liquidity and freeing the banks to do what they (supposedly) want the banks to do - making loans. Let government try and sell these warrants on the open market and see what they fetch for them. They can sell them in class Elizabeth Warren (a friend of holdover FDIC Chair Sheila Bair) is teaching, and see for themselves how their theory hits the fan.