Where did all the TARP funds go?

Under a typical transaction, for every $100 in soured mortgages being purchased from banks, the private sector would put up $7 and that would be matched by $7 from the government. The remaining $86 would be covered by a government loan provided in many cases by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. 

Geithner defended the decision to have the government carry so much of the risk. He said the alternative would have been to do nothing and risk a more prolonged recession or have the government carry all of the risk. 

"The sheer size of the program ... is so large and the leverage being provided to the private equity participants so beneficial, that the taxpayer risk is many times that of the private parties, thereby potentially skewing the economic incentives," the report states.

Other major recipients of money from the so-called Troubled Assets Relief Program also had substantial lobbying costs in the first three months of this year, including:

--Bank of America Corp., which reported spending $660,000 lobbying while receiving its $45 billion in help;

--Wells Fargo & Company, with $700,000 in lobbying costs and $25 billion in bailout money;

--Goldman Sachs, which spent $670,000 while receiving its $10 billion;

--Morgan Stanley, which spent $540,000 while also getting $10 billion in assistance;

--PNC Financial Services Group, spent $135,000 -- nearly double what it did at the end of last year -- on lobbying while receiving a $7.8 billion lifeline;

--U.S. Bancorp spent $170,000 on lobbying and got $6.6 billion in government aid.

Not bad for a program alive for just six months that still has $135 billion to spend. Barofsky's 250-page report to Congress also notes that taxpayers have been exposed to huge losses under TARP, with no guarantee that the funding will do what it's supposed to do.

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Remember all the calls last year for "greater transparency" in the banking industry? Now, the government won't even take its own advice on that.

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Take Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. In January, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee unveiled the TARP Reform and Accountability Act of 2009. Its goals: to "strengthen accountability, close loopholes, increase transparency, and require Treasury to take significant steps on foreclosure mitigation."

All laudable. Except, according to a January article in the Boston Business Journal, Boston's smallish OneUnited Bank earlier got a $12 million cash infusion from federal funds after "gaining influential support from" Frank.