Posts Tagged ‘GAO’
Bernanke confirmation delayed; GOP senators demand Fed transparency on bailouts
By: Mark Tapscott, Editorial Page Editor, Washington Examiner, 1/21/2010
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke’s confirmation vote by the Senate for a second four-year term has been delayed, pending receipt by the committee of documents concerning the Fed’s role in the massive bailouts of the U.S. financial industry in 2008 during the economic meltdown.
Three Republican senators - all members of the Senate Banking Committee - are pushing for release of all documents concerning the Fed’s role in the bailouts, especially that of the crippled insurance giant AIG before the confirmation vote is taken.
“This was the right decision to delay the vote on the Bernanke nomination, because the Fed continues to stonewall Congress and the public,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC. “We cannot rush ahead with the Bernanke nomination while examinations by Congress and the GAO of the Fed’s AIG bailout are ongoing.
“Senators should not be put in a position to vote before they know the full story behind Chairman Bernanke’s role in the bailout and financial meltdown, what the Fed knew and when, and how severe the losses for the taxpayers will be. Chairman Bernanke and the Fed could speed this process up by opening up the Fed to a full audit,” DeMint said.
Our Drunken Uncle
IBD Editorial, 10/21/2009
Spending: According to two separate Government Accountability Office scenarios, America’s long-term fiscal outlook is “unsustainable.” No surprise, since Uncle Sam is spending like a drunken sailor.
The GAO, Congress’ in-house think tank, warns that in “little over 10 years, debt held by the public as a percent of GDP” will hit a record high, exceeding the debt-to-GDP ratio seen after World War II. Then it will “grow at a steady rate thereafter,” according to the government forecasters.
“Social Security cash surpluses, which have been used to help finance other government activities, are projected to turn to cash deficits by 2016,” the GAO warns.
The agency’s fall update of its “Long-Term Fiscal Outlook” adds that “the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted in 2037, 4 years earlier than estimated last year.” The Medicare trust fund’s day of reckoning, meanwhile, “was also moved forward by 2 years to 2017.”
The GAO used two simulations, an optimistic one making the assumption of historically lower-than-average nonentitlement spending and higher-than-average tax revenues, and a second model assuming that spending and revenues would keep to historical averages. But “both simulations show that the federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path.”
Read more at http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=509816
STOP THE OVER-SPENDING! WE’RE BROKE!
Uncovering the bull under the bailout
Washington Examiner Editorial, October 23, 2009
Congress put American taxpayers on the hook for $700 billion last year when it approved the massive bailout to paper over the imprudent lending decisions of nine Wall Street giants: Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, State Street and the Bank of NY Mellon. The bailout was essential to save the nation from a complete economic meltdown. Or so insisted President George W. Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
One year later, however, a little-noted report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office questions whether the bailout — known officially as the Troubled Asset Relief Program — saved anything other than the jobs of greedy Wall Street executives and the political hides of their protectors in government.
Read More at http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Uncovering-the-bull-under-the-bailout-8426220.html
Where are the hearings? Congress . . . Hello??