The special inspector general for the TARP program, Neil Barofsky, has made a reputation for himself by issuing tough assessments of the troubled federal program for troubled assets. It’s been a problem for Tim Geithner’s Treasury Department. No one, after all, wants a watchdog at their heels. Treasury’s solution: muzzle …
The Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), the watchdog board created by Congress to oversee the TARP program, yesterday issued the equivalent of a severe weather warning for commercial real estate markets. Like the residential market before it, the markets for retail, apartment, and other business properties are facing a wave of …
Facing the stark reality of double-digit unemployment and the failure of his first $862 billion economic stimulus, President Barack Obama unveiled his second stimulus plan last month including a mix of subsidies and government-subsidized loans targeted solely at small business. Obama’s Second stimulus will be funded in part by roughly …
After suffering major electoral and legislative defeats last month, President Barack Obama took to the campaign trail in Nashua, New Hampshire, pitching his administration’s latest new plan to lower our nation’s double digit unemployment rate. This time, the President hopes to do for small businesses what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac …
In an unusually harsh report released yesterday, the government’s Special Inspector General for TARP blasted the bailout program, charging that it has not only failed to meet its goals, but that — absent change — it may have made things worse. Among other things, Inspector General Neil Barofsky concluded that …
The 2010 edition of the Index of Economic Freedom poses a frightening paradox. Around the world, the economically freest countries are, by and large, those with a British legacy. Indeed, the top five – Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland – were either founded or influenced by the …
