Treasury clashes with TARP watchdog over $23.7 trillion in proposed expenditures

Listen carefully to what Mr. Barofsky says about the Treasury's scheme of shifting toxic assets: He said that "disagreements remain" and there are "fundamental vulnerabilities ... relating to conflicts of interest, and collusion, transparency, performance measures and anti money laundering." It can be inferred from these words that the Treasury and the Fed are hand-picking the firms that they are working with without an "arms-length" relationship.

Now enter the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF). This is a $1 trillion program in which the Treasury and the Fed lend money to hand-picked firms to buy toxic assets for pennies on the dollar. The Fed has done this for buying toxic consumer loans and toxic mortgages, again for pennies on the dollar.

The TALF program is little known outside financial circles and does not receive the publicity that the TARP program received.

The Treasury and the Fed dismissed Mr. Barofsky's report as "inflated and not useful."

Now the Treasury is worried about toxic commercial mortgages and wants to expand TALF to buy up commercial mortgages that are going bad at a rapid rate.

What does all this mean? It means simply that banks and financial institutions are still hiding billions if not trillions of dollars of toxic assets "off the books" to such a large amount that Mr. Barofsky is sounding a warning bell.

Mr. Barofsky is scheduled to testify before Congress this week. Whether his words will give us a wake up call or be dismissed as the Treasury and Fed wants remains to be seen.

After all, committing $23.7 trillion of taxpayer money by the Treasury and the Fed isn't just chump change.

Should Congress rein in this huge and dangerous debt burden?