Tag Archives: TARP

When Treasury issued the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in October 2008, it designated $45.6 billion for mortgage-related programs. However, a little more than four years later, when a few of the non-mortgage TARP programs have drawn to a close, more than $40 billion in mortgage relief remains unspent, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GOA).

The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program is advising Treasury to discontinue use of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) as a benchmark for interest rates on TARP programs. ""Continued use of LIBOR for TARP while it is broken, unreliable, and remains potentially subject to manipulation undermines public confidence in financial markets and TARP and could put taxpayers at risk,"" SIGTARP stated in its quarterly report.

Two former executives of American Mortgage Specialists Inc. pled guilty Friday in a federal court in North Dakota for their part in a $27 million bank fraud scheme that put BNC National Bank at risk, according to a release from the Justice Department.

Three men were arrested Monday for bank fraud connected to the fall of New York's Park Avenue Bank in 2010, the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Trouble Asset Relief Program announced. Wilbur Anthony Huff, Matthew L. Morris, and Allen Reichman were presented in federal court for their alleged roles in the collapse of the Manhattan bank.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced Friday that it expects proceeds from the the sale of its American International Group, Inc. (AIG) common stock to be about $5 billion.

Top executives and favored borrowers faced indictment by a federal grand jury on Wednesday for their role in a massive fraud that led to the biggest Virginia bank collapse since 2008. According to a release on Thursday from SIGTARP, the accused are charged with masking non-performing assets at the Bank of the Commonwealth in Norfolk, Virginia.

In May, Treasury announced exit strategies to wind down on the remaining investments it still holds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). One of those strategies involved a second round of auctions to sell off preferred stocks it holds. On June 25, Treasury began the public offerings and announced Thursday it expects proceeds to be $204 million from the sale of preferred stock in seven financial institutions.

Howard R. Shmuckler, 68, of Virginia Beach, Va., was sentenced yesterday to 90 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for running a fraudulent mortgage-rescue business that received substantial fees but only modified clients' mortgages in a few cases, according to release from the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP).

While Treasury has stated it recovered $264 billion of the $245 billion invested in TARP, Treasury Assistant Secretary Timothy G. Massad said 343 banks still remain in TARP's taxpayer-funded bank programs. Most of these banks are smaller, community lenders and are having a more difficult time with raising funds from private investors in the capital markets to repay taxpayers, Massad explained in a Treasury blog Thursday.

President Obama's budget proposal continues to receive a barrage of criticism, especially from Republican lawmakers. Obama specifically targets the nation's largest banks with a Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee, through which he intends to raise $61 billion. The money is intended to ""compensate the American people for the extraordinary assistance they provided to Wall Street"" and discourage excessive risk-taking, Obama says. Part of the money would be used to fund the mass refinance program outlined in his State of the Union address.