Where Is The Bank Bailout Money Going? (VIDEO)

Where exactly is all of the bailout money going? Today, McClatchy addresses growing concerns over the lack of true oversight in government's enormous bailout of the banking industry. Here's how McClatchy put it:

"Although hundreds of well-trained eyes are watching over the $700 billion that Congress last year decided to spend bailing out the nation's financial sector, it's still difficult to answer some of the most basic questions about where the money went."

McClatchy also relays some damaging assessments from members of Congress: "Ten months into the Troubled Asset Relief Program, some members of Congress say that some oversight of bailout dollars has been so lacking that it's essentially worthless."

Read the entire story at McClatchy.

To coincide with McClatchy's piece, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund also tagged along with Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel charged with monitoring the bailout. Warren's nothing if not busy -- the video features a behind-the-scenes look at her hectic Washington schedule and her wrangling with members of Congress.

WATCH "Elizabeth Warren Goes To Washington":

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Comments

[Sundialsvc4]

Tell me, what exactly did you expect?

Having swindled the entire securities market, and having also bankrupted the insurance industry, a very well organized cabal of organized crime is now looting the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve System, having gained access to both.

In short, the United States Government is imploding inward toward national failure-of-state for precisely the same reasons (and in precisely the same way) that Rome did. Or that Babylon did.

Or, presumably, that the Kingdom of Ozymandias did ... whoever he was. We will never know, because the only thing remaining of him or of his kingdom is a solitary stone inscribed with the now-famous testament to human vanity: "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

The time will very soon come when the billions of people who occupy the rest of the planet will no longer accept our money, because it is not possible for any of them to deny the obvious fact that, where "good as gold" once stood, there is a criminal organization that is =attempting= in =bad= faith to defraud THEM!

Disgusting? Uh... yeah. Duh. No wonder they're pissed.

[Sundialsvc4]

If I may briefly extend my thought here: "this is what the high crime of Bribery can do to a country."
This is also probably why the Framers of our Constitution listed 'bribery' and 'treason' side-by-side when writing Article 2, Section 4.

The absurd notion that "the invisible hand" will magically "do the right thing" is patently false. It goes against every single thing that we know all too well about our own human nature. Unless you are watching BOTH of those "hands" with a constant eagle eye, and restricting their movements with well-crafted and scrupulously enforced laws, then what those "hands" will actually do is to steal you blind.

What they will then do, with a modest portion of the vast sums of money thereby stolen, is to pay government officials to do their bidding. Not a single branch of government is immune because every one of those branches are staffed by humans. "Some men's purses are never filled."

Crime "like a cancer grows," and at this scale, it grows unchecked. A nation loses its vitality, its ability to defend and to preserve itself. Although it may think to rest easy behind impenetrable redoubts of missiles and armies and what-not, it is consumed and brought down by "the enemy within."

This could well be our nation's fate, and within the space of just a few years hence.

[fourbrrl]

Lets start a movement...ALL americans are to NOT PAY one dime to their credit cards or mortagages for 3 months...tht'd bring em down...from THE PEOPLE. we are 95% of this economy and get ZERO respect...close our wallets to these schiesters and watch em squirm and fall !!! Then WE THE PEOPLE will have taken control WITHOUT marches or revolution in the historical sense...anyone game ??

[Hans Meiser]

That can not work and you will lose your possessions.
I think it would have been better for many people to be smarter than spending thousands of dollars on multiple credit cards, and buying cars and houses they can not afford.
You know, I understand there is predatory lending, and that has to be addressed. But for a large part, we brought the dependency on ourselves.

That isn't an excuse for the greed, but certainly it fertilized the ground for it nicely.

[joebhed]

Let's start a movement to take back the money system from the banksters and pursue a public money system that works for America so that we never have to worry about how they are robbing us blind with our own money.
The Money System Common.

[killpack]

I'd rather just not pay taxes to out of touch Congressmen who just want to give that hard earned money away to AIG and friends. If your Congressmen voted for the bank bailout, you need to vote them out of office.

[sonofsamphm1c]

If your congressman vote against the bailout he never should have been in office.

[classicalgeek]

You can safely move your money from the big banks to small local independent banks. Cancel your credit cards and pay off the balances. Pay off your mortgage early if possible. The less we owe, the less power they will have over us.

[vandegrasse]

This is greatest bank robbery of all history and it was done by bankers. Do people have no sense of outrage?

[sonofsamphm1c]

Do you honestly think Dizzy Lizzy agrees with you?

[8milereb]

Its sure not going to people like me, who has perfect credit and trying to buy my first home...THE BANKS DENIED ME and also wanted me to put 50% down

[dragonlady620]

How much of this money do you suppose ended up in offshore accounts?

[vandegrasse]

Why would they have to go offshore? They're perfectly safe here!

[US1st2009]

Elizabeth Warren is a national treasure.

Bair, Brooksley Born, and Elizabeth Warren seem like the smartest and most honest players in this amongst a group of wall street shills that are depressingly destroying our economy including summers, giethner, bernake, and volker, who all just happen to be members of bilderberg group.

[sonofsamphm1c]

You understand that Bear is working tirelessly at The behest of The American Bankers Association to defeat new regulation, and that she advocated a move that would have done enormous and unnecessary further damage to the economy.

She is a Bush neocon.

[Hans Meiser]

What regulation has she tried to defeat, and what move was she advocating? Please provide some links to back up your claim, and so that we may educate ourselves about your position.

[US1st2009]

My including her in this triumverate of the best in DC was based on the 7/23/09 HuffPo post "SEC, FDIC Say Council Should Be Supercop, Not Fed," and the comments she was quoted as making, specifically NOT giving more power to the Fed and a strong endorsement of the creation of a consumer finance protection agency.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/23/sec-fdic-say-council-shou_n_243769.html?show_comment_id=27774613#comment_27774613

"Key regulators on Thursday broke with the Obama administration, reaffirming their belief that some new powers to monitor big institutions against financial threats should go to an interagency council, not the Federal Reserve."

"Some Republican lawmakers also continued to warn against endowing the Fed with new powers in an overhauled system as Congress slogs through a complex deliberation that could reshape the financial landscape in the wake of a historic crisis."

"...Bair also endorsed the proposed creation under the Obama plan of a consumer finance protection agency to oversee areas such as mortgages and credit cards – an idea fiercely opposed by the financial industry. But she did express concern that around a quarter of the bank examiners now at the FDIC, already stretched in the current crisis, could be transferred to the new agency."

[US1st2009]

From the seminal and prescient 1/28/09 Village Voice article What Cooked the World's Economy? by James Lieber

"Paulson has taken flack for spending little to bring mortgages in line with falling home values. Sheila Bair, the FDIC chief who often scrapped with Paulson, said this would cost a measly $25 billion and that without it, 10 million Americans could lose their homes over the next five years. Paulson thought it would take three times as much and balked. Congress is bristling because the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) could provide mortgage relief-and some derivatives won't detonate if homeowners don't default. Obama's nominee for Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, could back such relief at his hearings."

[sonofsamphm1c]

Does Dizzy Lizzy believe a material amount of TARP funds have been used to pay unwarranted bonuses?

It's highly unlikely she believes that.

Does Dizzy Lizzy believe TARP is working?

It's likely she believes that.

Does Dizzy Lizzy think any TARP funds have fallen into an abyss?

It's unlikely she believes that.

Does Dizzy Lizzy think a material amount of TARP funds is missing?

It's highly unlikely she believes that.

Does Dizzy Lizzy think Paulson=Geithner?

Not likely, but her carelessness and lack of professionalism have misled many to think that is exactly what she thinks.

[lib liberal]

The disconnect between the problems facing main street and Washington keep widening. For the past 6 month's we're nothing but talk of regulation, but zero action. What a joke.

good articles... http://www.iamned.com ..

[Hans Meiser]

I love Liz Warren. She is so focused, so clear, so determined and so brutally honest, and a strong sense of fairness. And she is smart as a whip. Every time I watch her answer tough questions, she knows how to frame her answer such that she actually answers the question, but in a way a layman can understand.

We need more of her. Obama needs somebody like this to explain health care.

[sonofsamphm1c]

Please, transfer her to the Healthcare team.

[dragonlady620]

He already has a good advocate in Dr. Dean.

[sonofsamphm1c]

Let them switch places.

[Stanley Peterside]

1.problem
2.reaction
3.solution

http://www.ibuyringtones.com/iblog/conspiracy/problem-reaction-solution-david-icke/

[bflaska]

Danny Schechter also wrote today 8.11.09:

"And the cost of inaction? President Obama spoke to that on July 22: “If we don’t pass financial regulatory reform, the banks are going to go back to the same things they were doing before,” he said “In some ways it could be worse, because now they know that the federal government may think they’re too big to fail. And so if they’re unconstrained (by stricter regulations) they could take even more risks.”

Write that down. Put it in a bottle or a time capsule, text it as a memo to yourself on your I-Phone, or tweet it to your followers. If the banksters are not brought to heel this time, we will have survived this crisis only until the next one inevitably erupts.

You have been warned."

[bflaska]

Danny Schechter (http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/) writes today 8.11.09:

“Financial institutions did not amass trillions of dollars of toxic assets and tangle themselves up in a destructive web of credit derivatives by accident. Financial institutions did not produce and maintain technology allowing them to take advantage of traditional investors by accident. A thief was not able to operate a multi-bill­ion-dollar Ponzi scheme for decades by accident. We are not talking about the occasional rogue trader here who has bribed his compliance officer. Even within the existing regulatory architecture, these activities required a considerable amount of complacency (to be polite) by financial regulators across agencies, over the course of many years, and through many cycles of political appointees from both parties.”

Was it complacency or complicity? Nothing is likely to change unless there is pressure from below. That pressure is not going to come from the right. So where should it come from?

[spinns17]

here is the $$$$ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912

[themainpoint]

Elizabeth Warren--and a whole lot more who are like her-- for Congress!

[MikeHermit]

The true hero of the common American. She is what our legislative branch should be. Caring, honest, hard working, not in the pockets of corporations.