Inspector General blasts Treasury for bungling everything TARP

[Chris_]

Inspector General blasts Treasury for bungling everything TARP
^{By: J.P. Freire
Associate Commentary Editor}

Remember all that gladhanding about the success of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) earlier this month? Neil Barofsky, TARP’s special inspector general, puts the kabosh on that in his report released today. Just read this:

    “When Treasury refuses for more than a year to require TARP recipients to account for the use of TARP funds, or claims that Capital Purchase Program participants were “healthy, viable” institutions knowing full well that some are not, or when it provides hundreds of billions of dollars in TARP assistance to institutions, and then relies on those same institutions to self-report any violations of their obligations to TARP, it damages the public’s trust to a degree that is difficult to repair.”

He runs down the list:

Foreclosures:

    [T]he most specific of TARP’s Main Street goals, “preserving homeownership,” has so far fallen woefully short, with TARP’s portion of the Administration’s mortgage modification program yielding only approximately 207,000 (out of a total of 467,000) ongoing permanent modifications since TARP’s inception, a number that stands in stark contrast to the 5.5 million homes receiving foreclosure filings and more than 1.7 million homes that have been lost to foreclosure since January 2009.

Read more at the Washington Examiner