Before getting into the specifics of the report my first impression is one of dire disappointment over the chosen digital format of the release.  It’s a "pdf" file.  Blech.  I have to read this document using one of the most uninspired software applications of all time: Adobe Acrobat.  They should release it as a slick iPhone app or first-person-shooter video game.  That’s how you reach the techie in-crowd with the attention span of a meth-head on meth or the gaming community holed up in their caves (AKA parent’s basement) where so-said gamers toil away on the specs for their latest World of Warcraft avatar.  Gamers, don’t be haters… of me.   I totally get the obsession with creating a different identity when your current real-world version isn’t working out.  I don’t want to be me right now either but with soon-to-be-trashed credit I can’t find an identity thief willing to take over where my financial blunders left off so I’m sorta stuck… as me.  And if there’s no landlord willing to take a risk on this bad credit kid I’ll wind up in my parent’s basement just like you.  If that’s the case, you can bet your sweet gaming-ass I’ll live my life online.  I’m practically doing it already.  In the meantime here’s a small taste from the report:

Because so many different forces and programs have influenced financial markets over the last year, TARP’s effects are impossible to isolate.  Even so, there is broad consensus that the TARP was an important part of a broader government strategy that stabilized the U.S. financial system by renewing the flow of credit and averting a more acute crisis…

It’s difficult to explain complexities like “different forces” or “programs” to the American public so I hope the Oversight Panel makes this an oversight.  While they’re at it they may as well skip over any attempts to “isolate” these things because there’s more pressing news competing for my attention like Tiger’s appetite for self-destruction via sexting or the latest bashing on Health Care Reform in the Senate.  But first, I need to know what constitutes a “flow of credit”?  I do tend to come in on the tail-end of things (i.e. housing bubble about to burst, stock market about to crash, etc.) so it’s possible I missed the river of flowing credit created by the downpour of TARP money.  Hmmm…  But everyone I know had their credit card limits decreased for no apparent reason over the past year and mortgages are now only given out upon the handing over of your first born to the devil.  Perhaps this mysterious “flow of credit” is being kept a secret so people don’t use it all up before the banks loan it their financially-struggling, once-ever-so-briefly-salary-capped CEOs.  That’s probably not the right answer so I’m inclined to read on:

Although the government’s response to the crisis was at first haphazard and uncertain, it eventually proved decisive enough to stop the panic and restore market confidence. Despite significant improvement in the financial markets, however, the broader economy is only beginning to recover from a deep recession, and the TARP’s impact on the underlying weaknesses in the financial system that led to last fall’s crisis is less clear.

Hmmm… This reasoning makes perfect sense because I approach my current foreclosure quandary with the same indecisiveness, lack of clarity and unwillingness to commit to any sort of conclusion on any level whatsoever within the next two or three hundred decades or millenniums if and when certain conditions are met.   It’s fun to say a lot while saying absolutely nothing at all.  Here's another nugget from the report that really wants to say something:

Congress established broad goals for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. It is apparent that, after 14 months, many of the ongoing problems remain in the financial markets and the broader economy:

Before we have fun with the list of these “ongoing problems in the financial markets” I’d like to offer a few words of advice to the Oversight Panel.  When you discover a super secret piece of technology that suddenly allows you to single out (via bold bullet points) certain forces and programs once referred to as “impossible to isolate” please let the reader know before proceeding on with your next paragraph.  It really threw me there.  For a second I thought the authors of the report were contradicting themselves.  Whew.  Here’s the complete list of once-impossible-to-isolate-but-now-isolated forces and programs henceforth referred to as “ongoing problems”:

• The availability of credit, the lifeblood of the economy, remains low. Banks remain reluctant to lend, and many small businesses and consumers are reluctant to borrow. Even as new capital and earnings flow into banks, questions remain about whether this money is being used to repair damaged balance sheets rather than putting the money into lending.

Just a few paragraphs earlier they wrote, “Even so, there is broad consensus that the TARP was an important part of a broader government strategy that stabilized the U.S. financial system by renewing the flow of credit and averting a more acute crisis.”  I’m not at all offended by the clear contradiction.  What offends me is that there’s some schmuck of a Congressional Aide in Washington paid $85,000 a year to proofread these reports and catch this sort of thing.  I seriously do not want another dime of my tax dollars going toward this person’s unearned salary or catered lunches.  Somebody please fire the incompetent error-catcher while we examine the next “ongoing problem” identified by the Oversight Panel:

• Bank failures continue at a nearly unprecedented rate. There have been 149 bank failures between January 1, 2008 and November 30, 2009. The FDIC, facing red ink for the first time in 17 years, must step in to repay depositors at a growing number of failed banks. This problem may worsen, as deep-seated problems in the commercial real estate sector are poised to inflict further damage on small and mid-sized banks.

If people are dumb enough to still keep their money in banks they deserve to lose it.  Duh, people, have you ever heard the term, “hide it under the mattress”?  If that feels too risky, do what I do:  keep it under a small, plastic blue bucket at the following coordinates: 37°54'09.96" North and 85°57'09.11" West (if you get to the Ohio River you’ve gone just a tad too far).  If you can identify these coordinates then you win the Big Nerd Conspiracy Theorist Prize.  Anyone?  Anyone? 

• Toxic assets remain on the balance sheets of many large banks. Some major financial institutions continue to hold the toxic mortgage-related securities that contributed to the crisis, waiting for a rebound in asset values that may be years away. These banks may be considered “too big to fail,” but at the same time, they may be too weak to play a meaningful role in keeping credit flowing throughout the economy.

C’mon, now.  Are we really back to the old “bail out big banks to keep credit flowing” conundrum right alongside another contradiction?  Somebody please tell me that overpaid proofreader has been escorted beyond the D.C. city limits.

• The foreclosure crisis continues to grow. More than two million families have lost their homes to foreclosure since the start of this crisis, and countless more have lost their homes in short-sales or have turned their keys over to the lender. Foreclosure starts over the next five years are projected to range from 8 to 13 million, but more than a year after the TARP was passed, it appears that the TARP’s foreclosure mitigation programs have not yet achieved the scope, scale, and permanence necessary to address the crisis.

Let’s not jump to conclusions too quickly about the failures of “foreclosure mitigation programs”.  According to the numbers from a recent Associated Press article in the NY Times a total of 10,000 loans have been modified through these programs.  I don’t know about you but any number that’s higher than what I can count to is a really, really big number.  10,000 sounds like a ton of loans.  So does 100.  Hmmm.  I wonder how much more 10,000 is than 100… I bet it’s not that much.  I am to mathematics what the converse of Stephen Hawking is to physics.  This sheds a little light on how I wound up in foreclosure… I think.   

• Job losses continue to escalate. The unprecedented government actions taken since last September to bolster the faltering economy have not been enough to stem the rise of unemployment, which in October was at its highest level since June 1983.

Correct me if I’m wrong but is the commission blaming the government for job losses?  They take the one item the government influences in an indirect manner and cite them for it directly. What?!  No mention of inflated CEO bonuses in the midst of pay cuts across a swath of middle class America’s workers?  Bring back that proofreader.  I much prefer contradictions to hypocrisy. 

• Markets remain dependent on government support. The market stability that has emerged since last fall’s crisis has been in part the result of an extraordinary mix of government actions, some of which will likely be scaled back relatively soon, and few of which are likely to continue indefinitely. It is unclear whether the market can yet withstand the removal of this support.

What market are they talking about? The Fish Market?  The Black Market?  The Flea Market?  One thing is certain, it ain’t the Farmer’s Market.  My local favorite is crowded as ever and I’m still sore over the “Bread Guy” running out of loaves last weekend.  Please don’t tell me it’s the Stock Market.  I don’t have any money left there and the capitalist pig in me just can’t bear to watch others profit from a bear market when I can’t. 

• Government intervention signaled an implicit government guarantee of major financial institutions, and unwinding this guarantee poses a difficult long-term challenge. As yet, there is no consensus among experts or policymakers as to how to prevent financial institutions from taking risks that are so large as to threaten the functioning of the nation’s economy.

Here’s a radical idea:  Stop bailing them out after their risky behavior gets them into trouble.  And here’s a totally ludicrous idea:  Instead of using embarrassment as a deterrent to keep banks from bullying the working class, take some action.  Any action will do.  Treat them like children if you have to.  When a bank misbehaves, take away their CEO’s favorite toy (private jet, vacation condo, country club membership, mistress, etc.).  Please show some teeth so I can stop losing mine every time a bank kicks me in the face with an overdraft fee for a withdrawal one of their own departments attempted on my account without my authorization.  Now that’s a ludicrous idea. 

While the TARP, along with other strong government action, can be credited with stopping an economic panic, the program’s progress toward the other goals set by Congress – goals that are necessary for reestablishing stability in the financial system and providing the tools for rebuilding the American economy – is less clear.

These are the type of contradictions you get when the incompetent proofreader is rehired mid-article.  Ugghhh…  Somebody PLEASE explain how exactly TARP “can be credited with stopping an economic panic.”  If an audience vacates a burning theatre before the fire department shows up is it fair to say the firefighters are responsible for saving the lives of the patrons?  The answer is yes, according to the Congressional Oversight Panel but there’s no time for them to explain right now because the show on retarded rhetoric must go on:   

Since its inception, the TARP has gone through several different incarnations. It began as a program designed to purchase toxic assets from troubled banks, but it quickly morphed into a means of bolstering bank capital levels. It was later put to use as a source of funds to restart the securitization markets, rescue domestic automakers, and modify home mortgages. The evolving nature of the TARP, as well as Treasury’s failure to articulate clear goals or to provide specific measures of success for the program, make it hard to reach an overall evaluation. In its report of December 2008, the Panel called on Treasury to make both its decision-making and its actions more transparent. The Panel renews that call, as it has done with every monthly report since then.

This is a little like a TV network doing a rebroadcast of a sporting event from last season that I’ve watched three times already because it’s still on my DVR.  It doesn’t matter how many times I watch the damn thing, the score always turns out the same in the end.  If this bit of redundancy isn’t enough here’s the next cabochon of wisdom from the report:

Despite the difficult circumstances under which many decisions have been made, those decisions must be clearly explained to the American people, and the officials who make them must be held accountable for their actions. Transparency and accountability may be painful in the short run, but in the long run they will help restore market functions and earn the confidence of the American people.

I thought this Congressional Oversight Panel was supposed to explain the TARP debacle to the American people and hold someone accountable for its short fallings.  I can only analogize this in two ways:  1) “Passing the buck” to myself whilst suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder or 2) Tagging the innards of the L-Train whilst a transit cop looks at the spray-paint can in my hand and says, “Listen to me carefully, son.  I want you to find out who just tagged this train and give me a full report sometime in the near future… if you feel like it.”  That cop instills more of my confidence in injustice than justice and similarly, the COP who authored this report just wore out their relevancy on the issue because of their inability to seek justice of any flavor.  Furthermore, the English language should be severely punished with back-to-back screenings of Transylmania for using the backronym ‘COP’ for Congressional Oversight Panel.     

The low-hanging fruit from this report could be harvested for days but when it comes to the TARP all I really want to hear someone say is, “Hey, we screwed up.  We thought it would work out but it didn’t.  Sorry.  We’re ready to try something different.”  I say this every single morning to myself when looking in the bathroom mirror and contemplating the three hundred thousand dollar mistakes in the stock market, a gut-wrenching divorce and the illogical purchase of a 2 bedroom, 2 bath rambler mispriced as a Midwest mansion at the height of the housing boom.  I have to call myself out on the carpet if I’m to survive this twist of fate otherwise known as my life in progress.  Part of that is also admitting to myself I don’t want to read the rest of the Congressional Oversight Panel’s report because it’s downright boring despite being relevant to a large portion of the U.S. citizenry.

I decided to flog myself with the 178-page report anyways.  If you made it this far into the blog entry, kudos to you on a righteous flogging of yourself.  However, I encourage anyone with hours upon hours of spare time on their hands to read the report on TARP.  While frequently contradictory it is shockingly straightforward and informative for a government-generated document.  This, in no small way is due to Elizabeth Warren’s participation. This maven of monetary michegas first caught my eye with her performance in the documentary film “Maxed Out” a few years ago.  She cuts to the chase about Chase and other financial institutions in a way that makes my geeky heart go pitter-patter.  Ms. Warren also scares the hell out of me.  If she finds out I’ve spent more time in the past two weeks looking at photographs of Tiger Woods’ alleged mistresses than trying to find a way out of foreclosure in the past six months it could ruin my chances for government sympathy assistance. 

I can explain the time suck.  I really can.  The plethora of photographs of women coming out of the Woodswork are seemingly endless and if I want to stay current on deterrents to successful marriage I must burn these images into my brain no matter how trashy they may seem.  This is a roundabout way of saying it’s more interesting news than talk of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.  As a chowhound I order the country-fried steak and eggs with a side of… um… country-fried steak and eggs instead of the egg-white frittata with a side of fresh fruit.  While the latter is better for me and makes me a better person (I’m grumpy when I’m glutinous) the previous is too exciting, delicious, naughty and trashy to pass up.  Far too often I prefer my news be delivered in a similar fashion.  There’s an obvious joke about a celeb that belongs as the button on the end of this scene but as mentioned previously, I’m tired of picking the low-hanging fruit.  Why?  Because I feel like I’m hanging from one of those limbs almost every day.

P.S. If you managed to make it to the end of this posting and the report on TARP then you're ready for War and Peace.  Let me know if it's any good and who gets killed in the end because I've been stuck on Chapter 1 for the past 5 years.