Many members of Congress in both parties (and others as well) are anxiously waiting to see what we have to show for the $700 billion bailout package, but the Treasury has failed to provide them with specific information on what they propose to do to impose order on the housing market, forestall mass foreclosures, jump-start the flow of credit, and restore public confidence.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The U.S. Treasury has failed to reveal its strategy for stabilizing the financial system, not answered questions asked by a government watchdog, and has done nothing to help struggling homeowners, a report being released Friday charges.
In the most scathing criticism yet of Treasury's implementation of the $700 billion financial-rescue package, a draft report being issued by the five-member congressional oversight panel said there appear to be "significant gaps" in Treasury's ability to track hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
"The panel's initial concerns about the [Troubled Asset Relief Program] have only grown, exacerbated by the shifting explanations of its purposes and the tools used by Treasury," said the draft report, which found that the department has "not yet explained its strategy" for stabilizing the financial markets.
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....
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