TARP Police! Step Away From the Bailout Money!

TARP Police! Step Away From the Bailout Money!

www.cnbc.com

It may come as a surprise to people in the financial industry — it certainly did to me — but TARP's inspector general (SIGTARP) is not just a financial watchdog. Under its outgoing leader, Neil Barofsky, it has quietly built itself into a full-fledged financial law enforcement agency.

It has 45 investigators who are empowered to carry guns and badges, and 27 vehicles with sirens and lights spread out in its branch offices across the country. SIGTARP agents are empowered to make arrests,

(visit the link for the full news article)

Just what the country needs, another law enforcement agency.

These are folks who are essentially going into banks looking at the books and seeing if the TARP funds are being stolen or misdirected. Why on earth do they need guns, badges, cars with lights and sirens?

Why do they need to have the authority to arrest folks? Can't these dudes come in, look at the books and call the FBI in to make an arrest should one be warranted?

This is getting beyond crazy. IRS agents to police your health insurance, accountants with guns looking at TARP, pat downs coming to a public event near you.

If the entire trend was not so troubling, this stuff would actually be funny.

www.cnbc.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I thought budget cuts were ment to keep spending down,
Lower the spending so you can save a penny.


Not lower cuts so you can spend what you *Saved* on something else...

i have fallen victim to double postage

You gotta admit, their ARE creative little buggers, those government bureaucrats... nothing like a political appointee from the military industrial complex to "convince" our legislators of the peril of not funding another agency...

which will of course need its own expensive 'apparatus' to function.....

way to save guys.....

You just hit a double: first you opened another 'business' while America withers; and second, you created another pig to endlessly suck at the teat of the American taxpayer! Woo hoo!.... /end_sarcasm


......

wait ....

no..., let's see the silver lining..... they created jobs...... hooray for them!... /end_sarcasm_hiccup

If only they used their powers for good and arrest the CEOs of Bank of America and Goldman, etc.

reply to post by dolphinfan


Hello dolphinfan,

Just what we need another new recruit to the alphabet soup army of federal agents with blue coats and badges, guns and helmets charging around while the rest of us try to work hard so we can pay taxes to pay for this show.

There are so many competing law enforcement agencies I would not be surprised to see a new form of bank robber appear, loosely disguised as federal agents walk right into a bank and walk out with their cash calling it evidence in an investigation.

While a lot of white collar crime only works with paper and computers, if I was investigating fraud on the scale of billions and trillions I would at least want a little army behind me, could get real messy and dirty real quick.

reply to post by whatwasthat


I understand that they are considering two different measures.

1. To create a new enforcement agency to coordinate the activities of the other law enforcement agencies, they are not certain what to call that.

2. They are going to combine them all. The new agency will be called the ATF-FBI-ICE-TSA-DHS-SS

Going to be tough to fit the letters on those swat jackets

Originally posted by dolphinfan

1. To create a new enforcement agency to coordinate the activities of the other law enforcement agencies, they are not certain what to call that.

But.... wasn't that the mandate of the DHS? Or am I misremembering?

Why one Earth would someone charged with investigating spending and accounts need guns?! Every profession that requires a weapon, does so only because they can or will encounter an armed aggressive force. In the process of checking the books, what armed adversary will jump out with a 9mm semi-auto pistol? They cannot use self defense as an argument, as they don't even let civilians use that as an excuse to carry nationwide.

Everyday I see stories about America gone awry and it chips away more and more at my sole and my sanity.

Originally posted by Maxmars

Originally posted by dolphinfan

1. To create a new enforcement agency to coordinate the activities of the other law enforcement agencies, they are not certain what to call that.

But.... wasn't that the mandate of the DHS? Or am I misremembering?

"misremembering" now there is a term I have not seen in a while, was it from an attorney general speaking to a committee of congress during the Nixon years?