Here She Comes... Professor Elizabeth Warren; head of COP and Kashkari Castrator
Friday, January 9, 2009 at 09:54AM 
Neel, watch those family jewels cause she's coming after both of 'em.
Why? Because we know you are smart as hell, and a real rocket scientist to boot but unfortunately you belong at NASA not as the front man for the agency intended to restore confidence in the global markets. Gets some serious media training quickly or get the hell out of town. Not that there is anything cheery going on but you look as if you have never smiled in your entire life and haven't had a bowel movement since you left Goldman Sachs. You exude arrogance but hubris belongs in Greek tragedies not in history's greatest financial calamity-- particularly one that you managed to exacerbate with your brilliant bailout ideas. You've somehow managed to create instant financial global warming. No fossil fuels were even used. Forget about the Nobel prize. When you testify and you don't know something just try saying "I don't know Professor Warren but I will get you an answer as fast as humanly possible." TARP is something we should put over your head whenever you appear in public. Lighten up bud! Seriously!
Panel Steps Up Criticism of Treasury Over TARP
By Michael R. Crittenden
JANUARY 9, 2009
WASHINGTON -- 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.
Related Article:
"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.
The bipartisan panel, headed by Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren, reserved its most strident criticism for Treasury's approach to dealing with the foreclosure crisis at the root of the economic turmoil. The draft report noted that Treasury hasn't used any of TARP's $700 billion to help borrowers refinance or deal with mortgages that are worth more than the market value of the homes they are tied to.
"Treasury needs to be clear as to what, if anything, it has done, and if it insists on taking credit for private sector efforts, it must explain what 'help' means," the draft report said.
Treasury is responding to political pressure with a plan to better track what banks are doing with billions of dollars invested by the U.S. government.
For banks, it could ratchet up pressure to make loans they consider imprudent given economic uncertainty and the difficulty increasing the number of deposits that underpin their business.
Treasury Assistant Secretary Neel Kashkari, who leads the TARP program, said the Treasury plans to use already available quarterly data to compare lending by banks that have received TARP funds and those that haven't. The Treasury plans to collect monthly data from some of the largest banks that have received capital injections from the federal government.
Mr. Kashkari, in a speech in Washington, noted that the Treasury still has roughly $75 billion to distribute to banks as part of its $250 billion capital-injection program. "This capital needs to get into the system before it can have the desired effect," he said.
A Treasury spokeswoman said there is no time frame for instituting the new measurements and that details of the data to be collected remain uncertain.
Read Full Article at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123147360470067363.html?mod=WSJ_myyahoo_module
Here is a random clip of Kashkari doing the moonwalk during additional Congreesional Testimony (this clip is for serious wonks only)
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