Along with Dean Baker and a few others, I’ve been fighting a lonely crusade against those who insist that TARP “made money.” In a new report, the GAO faults Treasury for constantly shifting the goalposts on how they report that “profit” from TARP. It’s a slightly different argument, but one that highlights how this illusion of a successful TARP lies in manipulation of the numbers.

A stunning new GAO report prompted by Bernie Sanders shows there’s not much distance between the big financial institutions on Wall Street and the Federal Reserve system, particularly when it comes to the directors of the regional banks GAO found multiple Regional Bank directors with direct conflicts of interests.

Unemployment is officially at 9.1% (roughly 14M people) and underemployment is nearly double that. Social Security has been one of if not the most effective government program of all time, yet all we hear out of Washington is how there must be “shared sacrifices” (from all but the very richest of us of course) so Social Security must be “on the table” for budget discussions, even though Social Security has not contributed one dime to the “problems” with the budget.

We definitely need strong federal servicer standards, and CFPB is a great place to house them. All the more reason to recess-appoint Elizabeth Warren as soon as possible.

The Director of National Intelligence has floated a “shockingly bad” proposal on how much review GAO will be permitted within the intelligence community. According to Steven Aftergood, because the proposal defines the intelligence community broadly, it might result in the loss of GAO review in agencies like DOD and State.

For some reason, the GAO didn’t directly make reference to the most effective alternatives that would do an even better job than the individual mandate at decreasing the number of uninsured–single payer or a basic public plan that would enroll the uninsured by default.

The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) has basically been a disaster since its start, and it remains one to this day. Roughly nine months ago, the Government Accountability Office examined the program, found many problems, and made several recommendations to improve it. Since then, the Treasury department has failed to make most of the needed changes.

During this recent debate about the deficit and cutting programs that help regular people, it is important to keep in mind that not only are the oil companies receiving massive tax subsidies directly from the government, but, thanks to lack oversight and bad lease agreements, the federal government is likely getting a far smaller share of the domestic oil revenue than it should.

On Thursday, the Government Accountability Office released a report (pdf) to Congress summarizing its latest analysis of the training of the Afghan National Army (ANA). The title conveys much of the sense of the report: “AFGHANISTAN SECURITY: Afghan Army Growing, but Additional Trainers Needed; Long-term Costs Not Determined”. The report documents that training of the ANA actually met an interim goal three months ahead of schedule last fall, but then indicated that the overall end goal for ANA size likely will need to be increased. Importantly, the report plants what I predict will be the seed producing a total lack of accountability for David Petraeus when the ANA eventually proves to be not up to the task of taking over full control of Afghan security (while “training” goals are currently being met, ANA units still remain far from functional on their own) by stating that the effort is suffering because of lack of staffing by those who carry out the training of ANA forces.

Both the GAO report and the only media report I have seen on it, from CNN, fail to to cite the importance of the data presented in Figure 1 of the report, where we see that despite the increased numbers of ANA forces being trained and the “surge” of ISAF forces, violence levels in Afghanistan continue in a steady upward trend. Even when factoring in the seasonal variation in violence, it can be seen in Figure 1 that the total number of monthly attacks in winter 2010-2011 is roughly twice the rate of summer 2008 attacks. When comparing identical seasons, summer 2010 attack rates are roughly three times summer 2008 attack rates and seven times summer 2005 attack rates.

TSA chief John Pistole went for the big lie yesterday in his testimony before the Transportation and Commerce Committee. . . .