I found it just lying around in this file cabinet drawer over at Treasury. Poor Tim Geithner! How incompetent can you be when you literally can’t give away money?
The Small Business Lending fund was allocated 30 billion dollars to give to smaller banks to disburse as loans to Small Business, which as you should know, are the actual Job Creators in this country. That program just ended. Only 4 billion of the 30 billion was actually paid out. ½ of that amount isn’t going to small business, however. It’s being used by the banks that took it, to pay down their TARP loans because this money is even cheaper than the TARP money. (Isn’t it great when they guys who lend you money lend you even more money to pay off the first money at a cheaper rate? What a country!) But anyway, 30 billion allocated minus 4 billion actually dispersed = 26 BILLION dollars saved.
Small Business Lending Fund a Dud
Banks Use Small Business Funds To Pay Off Tarp
(sorry for the link to FOX News, but the WSJ article it quotes is behind a subscription wall)
_____
Then we have HAMP, the federal mortgage foreclosure program that has fallen so very short of it’s goals to help distressed homeowners, which was begun in 2009 with funding of 50 Billion. To date, a whopping 1.6 billion dollars has actually been disbursed. Leaving us with, 50 BILLION minus 1.6 Billion = 48.4 BILLION in savings so far. Sorry all you homeowners who lost your houses the last couple of years, even though this money was kicking around.
Secret Docs Show Foreclosure Watchdog Doesn't Bark or Bite
_____
And now let’s look at the EHLP program which was a program designed to help temporarily unemployed homeowners keep their homes with mortgage subsidies of up to $50K over 2 years.
This program was ineptly and incompetently rolled out by HUD and used only ½ of the 1 Billion in funds allocated, leaving 568 MILLION unused. Too bad, unemployed homeowners! Program’s over now.
Program to Help Unemployed Leaves Millions on the Table
_____
OK - That’s 75 Billion dollars I found in just ½ hour of Googling terms like "Geithner and File Cabinet Drawer"! I’m gonna tell the President and the Treasury Department and HUD what I found and hope they pay me a big fat finder’s fee.You too can do this in your spare time and make big bucks at home. I’m working on the infomercial.
_____
But seriously, folks. President Obama and the Democratic Party and the rest of us are ill-served by programs that get big hoopla announcements and then are bufoonishly rolled out with qualifications that no one can meet. There is structural incompetence at work here.
I could make the same comments or similar about a Justice Department that presumably gets the morning paper the same way that I do and can read about American veterans being defrauded of billions of dollars by banks that hid illegal (yes, illegal) fees in their closing documents.
Now, are these guys going to shape up, or what? Are they accountable to anyone for their lack of performance and basic job skills? Is the President going to allow his Presidency to be sunk by the underwhelming record of his Cabinet? He needs to fire some people. He also needs to read the paper the same way I do in the morning. I'm starting to think that his version has big scissored out holes.