Out of Control

With the ink barely dry on TARP, the Treasury Department’s already redacting details of how its $700 billion bailout is being spent. Thanks to the web blog site BailoutSleuth.com, we now know that the fed’s promise of transparency was worth about as much as the MBS’s we, the people, are being stuck with.

When the Treasury Department's bailout czar provided an update this week on the government's $700 billion plan to rescue troubled financial institutions, he vowed that it would be an “open and transparent program with appropriate oversight.'” The next day, the Treasury Department put out an announcement about a major bailout-related contract with Bank of New York Mellon Corp. that fell short in the transparency department.

See the document, or rather a whole lot of black marker, here.

And a hat tip to TechDirt.com for spotting it.