Posted on 01/31/2010 1:35:52 PM PST by NormsRevenge
The $700 billion bailout program for the financial industry has so far done little to boost bank lending, aid small businesses or reduce home foreclosures, a top government watchdog said in a report.
Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general over the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), said in a report that while the bailout has helped stabilize the financial system, many of the program's original goals have not been met.
"Lending continues to decrease, month after month, and the TARP program designed specifically to address small-business lending — announced in March 2009 — has still not been implemented by Treasury," Barofsky wrote in the report. "The TARP foreclosure prevention program has only permanently modified a small fraction of eligible mortgages, and unemployment is the highest it has been in a generation."
The Obama administration is urging Congress to pass an additional fiscal stimulus measure, or "jobs bill," early this year to help bolster the economy. Lawmakers are anxious about the economy weighed down from 10 percent unemployment and ongoing weakness in the housing market.
Senate Democrats are split about whether they should use TARP money that has been repaid from some of the largest banks to help support new programs to boost lending to small businesses. Republicans want the repaid money to go toward paying down the $1.35 trillion deficit.
Barofsky questioned if the government has started to lose its leverage over the nation's largest banks now that they have repaid more than a combined $100 billion. The banks have seen their financial health improve significantly and they have continued to pay lavish bonuses to employees.
Meanwhile, Congress is debating new regulations on the financial industry, including beefed up consumer protections, new limits on the multi-trillion dollar derivatives market and a new mechanism to disolve large failing firms so that taxpayers are not on the hook for future bailout money. The House passed legislation in December, but the Senate has yet to act and the Senate Banking Committee continues to draft legislation behind the scenes.
Without major changes, Barofsky said it's unclear if the TARP program could ever be deemed a success.
"It is hard to see how any of the fundamental problems in the system have been addressed to date," Barofsky wrote.
The report argues that the financial industry believes now more than ever that the government will bail out systemically important firms. And the government efforts to support the housing market risk reinflating a market bubble.
"Stated another way, even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car," the report says.
Barofsky's office has repeatedly called for changes to one program under TARP that created public-private partnerships to purchase toxic loans and securities. In his report, Barofsky noted the possibility of "suspect trades" in the partnerships that already exist. Barofsky has pushed for stronger conflict-of-interest walls in the Public Private Investment Program.
"We believe that a requirement for a separate investment team for the Public Private Investment Program is not necessary and would be detrimental to the program," said Meg Reilly, Treasury spokeswoman. "As detailed in earlier reports, we believe that the PPIP compliance rules we have implemented to monitor trading activity are a rigorous and effective method of protecting taxpayers."
:-]
Just remember how many corrupt democrat politicians came out smiling because of their constituents vs republican districts!
Also remember those brilliant and wasteful $3000 roadside signs broadly advertising that this posthole digger & filling jobs are paid for by current & future taxpayers!!
All,
Also in this article was called for a 25%-50% drop in the market over the next month...likely not good prospects for Monday, 2/1.
Let’s have some predictions and opinions on this predicted drop.
After spending billions of taxpayer dollars on TARP and bailouts they are failing. Even though congress was swamped with letters, faxes and phone calls from constituents opposed to the TARP and bailouts, the congress and White House did them anyway. Now, these findings are saying government hasn’t done enough! So now Obama is trying to tell us we’re angry at the banks. Do any of these people get it?
The TARP Inspector General’s report is out. http://www.sigtarp.gov/embargoed/embargo.pdf The following is a verbatim extract from the executive summary. The penultimate paragraph of the summary states that the financial danger is not past. If anything it has gotten worse. Reflecting on what lasting change TARP has brought to the economy, the report said:
Stated another way, even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car.
Many of TARP’s stated goals, however, have simply not been met. Despite the fact that the explicit goal of the Capital Purchase Program (“CPP”) was to increase financing to U.S. businesses and consumers, lending continues to decrease, month after month, and the TARP program designed specifically to address small-business lending — announced in March 2009 — has still not been implemented by Treasury. Notwithstanding the fact that preserving homeownership and promoting jobs were explicit purposes of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (“EESA”), the statute that created TARP, nearly 16 months later, home foreclosures remain at record levels, the TARP foreclosure prevention program has only permanently modified a small fraction of eligible mortgages, and unemployment is the highest it has been in a generation. Whether these goals can effectively be met through existing TARP programs is very much an open question at this time. And to the extent that the Government had leverage through its status as a significant preferred shareholder to influence the largest TARP recipients to carry out such policy goals, it was lost with their exit from TARP. As important as assessing the effectiveness of TARP programs is, in the final analysis, TARP can truly only be a success if TARP is both managed well and positive effects are enduring. The substantial costs of TARP — in money, moral hazard effects on the market, and Government credibility — will have been for naught if we do nothing to correct the fundamental problems in our financial system and end up in a similar or even greater crisis in two, or five, or ten years’ time. It is hard to see how any of the fundamental problems in the system have been addressed to date.
To the extent that huge, interconnected, “too big to fail” institutions contributed to the crisis, those institutions are now even larger, in part because of the substantial subsidies provided by TARP and other bailout programs.
To the extent that institutions were previously incentivized to take reckless risks through a “heads, I win; tails, the Government will bail me out” mentality, the market is more convinced than ever that the Government will step in as necessary to save systemically significant institutions. This perception was reinforced when TARP was extended until October 3, 2010, thus permitting Treasury to maintain a war chest of potential rescue funding at the same time that banks that have shown questionable ability to return to profitability (and in some cases are posting multi-billion-dollar losses) are exiting TARP programs.
To the extent that large institutions’ risky behavior resulted from the desire to justify ever-greater bonuses — and indeed, the race appears to be on for TARP recipients to exit the program in order to avoid its pay restrictions — the current bonus season demonstrates that although there have been some improvements in the form that bonus compensation takes for some executives, there has been little fundamental change in the excessive compensation culture on Wall Street.
To the extent that the crisis was fueled by a “bubble” in the housing market, the Federal Government’s concerted efforts to support home prices — as discussed more fully in Section 3 of this report — risk re-inflating that bubble in light of the Government’s effective takeover of the housing market through purchases and guarantees, either direct or implicit, of nearly all of the residential mortgage market.
Stated another way, even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car.
ht/ February 2nd, 2010 5:18 pm
Covered with a tarp http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/02/02/covered-with-a-tarp/#more-7890
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