The Other McCain

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TARP Watchdog Report: Administration ‘Manipulated’ Data to Hide AIG Losses

Posted on | October 25, 2010 | 3 Comments

They tried to “hide the decline,” so to speak:

In a scathing 338-page report released today, a federal watchdog exposes the failure of the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout and suggests Treasury Department officials engaged in a politically motivated attempt to hide losses at bankrupt insurance giant AIG with “manipulated” data.
“Treasury should have disclosed that it had changed its valuation methodology and should have published a side-by-side comparison of its new numbers with what the projected losses would be under the auditor-approved methodology that Treasury had used previously and will use in the future,” says the report from the office of Neil Barofsky, special inspector general known as SIGTARP. “This conduct has left the Treasury vulnerable to charges it has manipulated its methodology for calculating losses to present two different numbers depending on its audience.”
One set of numbers about AIG losses was released in “early October as part of a multifaceted publicity campaign touting the positive aspects of TARP,” the report says, while a second set of audited numbers was provided to the GAO for a November release. . . .

Read the whole thing. Looks like Barofsky’s got ’em caught red-handed, and Tim Geithner might get his long-overdue tossing under the Obama bus. Big hat-tip for the Twitter tip from Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge, who says:

“If after all this disclosure Geithner does not resign, well, America truly will have the Treasury Secretary, not to mention administration, it deserves.”

Indeed.

UPDATE: Nobody gives a damn, I guess. Drudge is headlining a story about Treasury bond yields (!) and another about the ballooning deficit, but seems not to have noticed this news that the Treasury Department has been caught cooking the books.

Sigh. At least  it’s not being completely ignored:

UPDATE II: The Obama administration’s efforts to suppress economic bad news has been abetted, of course, by the media. Kudos to CBS News for this surprisingly straightforward “60 Minutes” feature on the ugly realities of unemployment:

More commentary at The Underground Conservative. Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi might want to get some cheese to go with this whine: “We haven’t really gotten the credit for what we have done.”

Don’t worry, Nancy. If the Democrats get wiped out on Nov. 2 — “Five Signs Your Party Is Doomed” — I’m sure you’ll get lots of credit for that. The guy in the White House has plenty of room for you under his bus.

Category: Barack Obama, Economics, Inspectors General, Scandal

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