Just off the heels of watchdog Neil Barofskys’ report that revealed how many banks across the country are misusing the bailout funds that were meant to stimulate lending, two senior Democratic lawmakers have asked President Obama’s administration to put the mechanisms in the place that would make the $700 billion bailout more transparent to the American public.
 
Senator Max Baucus of Montana and Representative Edolphus Towns of New York have led the charge to petition Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to adopt the recommendations issued in the watchdog report. Baucus is the head of the Senate Finance Committee and Towns is the …read more

When the federal government decided to siphon taxpayer money into banks across the country, it hoped that banks would pass the money along in the form of loans, thus alleviating the problem of tightfisted banks. However, the inspector in charge of overseeing the bailout money, Neil Barofsky, has revealed that many of the banks that received bailout money are using it for a variety of unrelated purposes.
According to a report that has yet to be published, 110 of the 360 banks that received bailout money used at least some of the funds for investments.
Among other misuses of the funds, 52 …read more