Report on the Use of Government-Backed Guarantees to Promote Financial Stability
From the Congressional Oversight Panel
The Congressional Oversight Panel’s November oversight report, “Guarantees and Contingent Payments in TARP and Related Programs,” finds that the income of several government-backed guarantee programs will likely exceed their direct expenditures, and that guarantees played a major role in calming financial markets. These same programs, however, exposed American taxpayers to trillions of dollars in guarantees and created significant moral hazard that distorts the marketplace.
The extraordinary scale of these guarantees, the significant risk to taxpayers, and the corresponding moral hazard leads the Panel to conclude that these programs should be subject to extraordinary transparency. The Panel specifically identified the guarantee of Citigroup assets under AGP — the largest single guarantee offered to date — and strongly urges Treasury to provide regular, detailed disclosures about the status of the assets backing up this guarantee. Treasury should disclose greater detail about the rationale behind guarantee programs, the alternatives that may have been available and why they were not chosen, and whether these programs have achieved their objectives. This should include an analysis of why Citigroup and Bank of America were selected for AGP and not others.
Guarantees and Contingent Payments in TARP and Related Programs