PrintOctober 25, 2010
IG: Treasury 'uses questionable methods and may be too optimistic'
Why Inspectors General are worth their weight in gold. From Bloomberg:
The Treasury Department's plan to recoup taxpayer funds from the bailout of American International Group Inc. uses questionable methods and may be too optimistic, the Troubled Asset Relief Program's inspector general said.Treasury's estimate that it will lose $5 billion on its TARP investment in AIG "represents a dramatic shift from the $45 billion loss that Treasury had projected in its AIG investment just six months earlier," Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for TARP, said in a report today. "While AIG's fortune may have indeed improved during the course of those six months, there is a serious question over how much of this decrease comes from a change in Treasury's methodology for calculating the loss as opposed to AIG's improved prospects."
The Obama administration has been changing methodologies so as to burnish their record -- all without telling anyone they were changing the rules of the game for political benefit. How does that square with the promise of transparency? Is this stunt reminiscent of the new Obama-created metric of "jobs saved and created"? Or General Motors boasting it had paid back its loans-when in reality it just shuffled papers and accounts?
Is Timothy Geithner just addicted to such shenanigans? After all, he fudged on his own taxes. So why not try to create a glowing portrait of the TARP program?
Last week I blogged about these Unsung Heroes. They are heroes. If only the mainstream media would pay heed.
