Rapidly Changing Economic Conditions or Plundering the U. S. Treasury

By Eddie Griffin

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Current economic activity is so fluid and rapid and so vast that skiddish market conditions change, every hour on the hour, and every minute in between.

Yesterday, there were calls drill here and drill there. But that’s when oil was topping $140 a barrel. Now oil prices at $56 a barrel the calls have died down and a return to sanity.

Nevertheless, we have committed $$$ billions to a bailout package, giving the Secretary of Treasury absolute power to spend the money as he saw fit. Since then, he’s been jumping from pillar to post, trying the figure out where to put the billions of taxpayer’s dollars to jumpstart the economic battery.

But wait! Haven’t we jumped the gun?

The Washington Post reports:

In the six weeks since lawmakers approved the Treasury's massive bailout of financial firms, the government has poured money into the country's largest banks, recruited smaller banks into the program and repeatedly widened its scope to cover yet other types of businesses, from insurers to consumer lenders.
Along the way, the Bush administration has committed $290 billion of the $700 billion rescue package.

Yet for all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste. Nor has the first monitoring report required by lawmakers been completed, though the initial deadline has passed.

Now I'm not an alarmist. But this stinks to high heaven... taxpayers' money being disbursed without any oversight. I could swear somebody is trying to plunder the Treasury. Remember: The Shah of Iran in 1979, the Tea Pot Dome Scandal, and Lincoln’s great land giveaway.