Want to know where your bail-out money went?

If you are like me, you are probably wondering exactly where did the $350B of the first round of TARP money go.

Well that’s one of the Financial Industries closest guarded secrets; however the Washington Times reported today that some of that money surely went to President Obama’s appointees.  According to the U.S. Office of Ethics, Mr. Jacob Lew, Deputy Secretary of State, listed a whopping $1,099,999.99 in salary and discretionary cash from his job as a Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer at Citi Alternative Investments a Citigroup Unit, as well as between $250,001 – $500,000 in unvested, restricted Citigroup stock.  Looks like Mr. Lew decided to get out of the banking industry just in time.

In fairness though, he isn’t the only appointee reporting large incomes from 2008:

We have newly confirmed Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. reporting $3M from his last job as  a partner at the D.C.-based law firm of Covington & Burling, and Deputy Attorney General-nominee David Ogden reported $1.5M from his partnership share fromt eh WilmerHale law firm.  We also have Defense Department General Counsel-nominee Jeh Johnson reporting $2.6M in partnership income from Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison LLP.  However the surprising one is Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Mary Schapiro reporting $675,000 in deferred compensation as a board director at Kraft Foods, and $2.75M through her former full-time job as chief executive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FIRA).

How is it she can go from the financial watch-dog agency like FIRA and be selected to run another financial watch-dog agency like the SEC?  It’s all-too obvious based on what is happening now in the banking industry that Ms. Schapiro wasn’t doing her job in FIRA, what makes Mr. Obama think she will do a better job in the SEC?!

I know I pledged to give President Obama a chance, and I still plan to do so; however there is a difference in giving the new president a chance, and sticking my head in the sand.

More to come…unfortunately!

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James A. Restucci is the author of this blog. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Internal License.

One Response to Want to know where your bail-out money went?

  1. TVNews says:

    Agreed.

    We cannot do as the media did and fail to challenge his stances simply because we want to give him a chance.