Free Republic

Adding insult to injury, the U.S. government has paid private firms nearly $160 million, to distribute funds from its severely mismanaged and fraud-infested program to bail out the nation’s financial institutions. Rife with waste and abuse the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has already proven to be a troubling experiment of U.S. tax dollars with virtually no oversight. In fact, dozens of criminal investigations have been launched into the controversial bailout and the risk is only going to grow, according to a Treasury Department Inspector General report issued last spring. So far investigations have centered on securities fraud,...

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show. AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when...