Multiple Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalists Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele recently reviewed the outcome of the massive government bailout known as TARP (Vanity Fair).

Worth every word to read, this work speculates as to where the money went and whether or not it helped the American public.

With massive financial institutes buying up smaller banks with reputations for poor lending practices, the public is outraged at the outcome of this “economic recovery” package.  Pelosi continues to vote in favor of bailing out those most responsible for our current crisis.

Treasury had prepared a form with blank spaces for the name of the bank and the amount of tarp money requested. Each C.E.O. filled in the two blanks by hand—$10 billion, $15 billion, $25 billion, whatever—and then signed and dated the document. That was all it took.

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Rather than targeting the weak for relief—or allowing them to fail, as the government allowed millions of ordinary Americans to fail—Paulson and Treasury pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial system without prior design and without prospective accountability. What was this all about? A case of panic by Treasury and the Federal Reserve? A financial over-reaction of cosmic proportions? A smoke screen to take care of a small number of Wall Street institutions that received 100 cents on the dollar for some of the worst investments they ever made?