COP Evaluates TARP, Gives it a Passing Grade

[1]This being December, with school winding down and entering finals period, children everywhere are beginning the biannual tradition of dreading the arrival of their report card. Surprisingly, the Congressional Oversight Panel [2] (COP), the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) oversight group chaired by Prof. Elizabeth Warren, decided to get in on the action themselves this year with their December report [3]. Titled "Taking Stock," the latest installment of COP's monthly report looks back over the life of the program, and examines whether TARP has been effective or not. Reading the report, it looks like COP reluctantly gives the program a passing grade, but isn't entirely happy with TARP's progress so far.

The first hundred pages or so of the report are a trip down memory lane, detailing the chronology of the financial crisis and the evolution of the federal response to it. The review is timely, considering that Geithner just renewed the program for another year, and the Obama administration is considering using TARP funds for job creation measures. The last twenty pages, though, are where the real gold lies.

In a section called "How well has the TARP done in meeting its statutory objectives," COP lays out its analysis of TARP's effectiveness to date. The Panel gives a relatively upbeat assessment of the program, saying "there is little doubt that… the TARP played an important role, along with other emergency programs from the Federal Reserve and FDIC, in stabilizing the financial system." So, not only is the system stable (a good thing, I'm told), but TARP apparently had something to do with it.

That said, TARP isn't getting an A+ from this report. COP points out that it's unclear if TARP helped stave off a worsening of the recession, and that despite TARP, there "remains disagreement on whether banks have adequate capital," with critics pointing out that credit availability, the lifeblood of the business sector, remains low. The Panel also notes that TARP will end up costing taxpayers between $241 billion and $341 billion while doing little to stem rising unemployment. And, as it has done several times in past reports, COP criticizes Treasury's stewardship of the program, in particular highlighting Treasury's lack of action on tracking how TARP recipients used their funding.

Overall, it seems that COP would give TARP a solid C. Nothing flashy, and there's lots of room for improvement (Rep. Maloney's TARP database bill [4] would help with the fund-tracking issue), but the nation is better off with the program than without it.