Maybe they're trying to distract our attention while Fannie Mae needs another $11B in Federal bailout money. Maybe they can just sneak that in with nobody watching.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009, 11:25am EST Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner extends TARP The Business Review (Albany) - by Kent Hoover Washington Bureau Chief
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner notified Congress Wednesday that he is extending the Troubled Asset Relief Program through Oct. 3, 2010.
“This extension is necessary to assist American families and stabilize financial markets because it will, among other things, enable us to continue to implement programs that address housing markets and the needs of small businesses, and to maintain the capacity to respond to unforeseen threats,” Geithner wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The Treasury Department will continue to use TARP funds to mitigate home foreclosures, provide capital to community banks and take additional steps to boost lending to small businesses, Geithner wrote. The department also may increase its commitment to efforts to improve the secondary markets for consumer loans, small business loans and commercial mortgages.
Beyond these programs, the department will not use any remaining TARP funds “unless necessary to respond to an immediate and substantial threat to the economy stemming from financial instability,” Geithner wrote. “As a nation we must maintain capacity to respond to such a threat. Banks are still experiencing significant new credit losses, and the pace of bank failures, which tend to lag economic cycles, remains elevated.”
Geithner noted that many of the Federal Reserve programs and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. programs that complemented TARP are ending.
“This creates a financial environment in which new shocks could have an outsized effect -- especially if an adequate financial stability reserve is not maintained,” the letter stated.
Geithner promised to consult the president and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and notify Congress before using TARP funds to address shocks to the financial system.
Keeping TARP funds on hand to deal with such shocks “will bolster confidence and improve financial stability, thereby decreasing the probability that it will need to be used,” Geithner wrote.
The Treasury Department also anticipates up to $175 billion in TARP repayments by the end of next year. It also expect it won’t deploy more than $550 billion of the $700 billion allocated for TARP. Unused TARP funds will help the department reduce the federal deficit, according to Geithner.
The notice of the TARP extension came the same day as the program’s Congressional Oversight Panel issued a report concluding the program “played a critical role in renewing the flow of credit and preventing a more acute crisis.” .......................>>>>......................>>>>.................http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2009/12/07/daily24.html?surround=lfn
Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, says policymakers still have not addressed fundamental problems that triggered the financial crisis.
The government’s top bailout cop said Sunday that more than a year after the financial crisis hit, many of the goals of Washington’s $700 billion bank rescue program remain unmet and that policymakers still have not addressed fundamental problems that triggered the crisis, leaving the financial system vulnerable to another collapse.
In a 224-page quarterly report to Congress, Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP: undefined, undefined, undefined%), acknowledged that TARP had stabilized the financial system. But he said that it has so far failed to restore consumer and business lending and to significantly prevent home foreclosure.
And in a slap at Congress and the Obama Administration, Barofsky said that “it is hard to see how any of the fundamental problems in the system have been addressed to date.”
He said the bailout “will have been for naught if we do nothing to correct the fundamental problems in our financial system and end up in a similar or even greater crisis in two, or five, or ten years’ time.”................>>>>.......................>>>>..........................http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/31/tarp-cop-bailout-goals-unmet/
* Total US govt financial system support seen at $3.7 trln By David Lawder
WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - Increased housing commitments swelled U.S. taxpayers' total support for the financial system by $700 billion in the past year to around $3.7 trillion, a government watchdog said on Wednesday.
The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said the increase was due largely to the government's pledges to supply capital to Fannie Mae (FNMA.OB) and Freddie Mac (FMCC.OB) and to guarantee more mortgages to the support the housing market.
Increased guarantees for loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration, the Government National Mortgage Association and the Veterans administration increased the government's commitments by $512.4 billion alone in the year to June 30, according to the report............>>>>..................>>>>...............http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2010140720100721
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