Over at Politics Daily, MoJo’s DC bureau chief, David Corn, points out that all the fuss over death panels and granny-killing government health care has overshadowed some very disturbing economic news. The congressional oversight panel monitoring the bank bailout, or Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), released a report Tuesday on the toxic assets that helped suck the country into an economic vortex. And, as David writes, the panel found that “the Treasury Department has not used its TARP billions to purchase this junk—which includes both lousy commercial and residential mortgages and securities based on lousy mortgages—and that billions of dollars of toxic assets remain on the books, threatening the security of numerous financial institutions.”
So far, David observes, the news that TARP’s billions have not been used as intended, and that the economy remains at real risk, has barely registered on the media’s radar. Read the rest of the column here.
