Why Isn't the Bailout Working?

Dec. 19, 2008— -- The word "bailout" was one of the most-searched-for terms on the Internet this year. It's been all over the news. It's been discussed everywhere from Congress to American living rooms.

But what happened to that money that was already handed out? What happened to that first chunk of change from the $700 billion bailout that was supposed to increase lending?

The plan didn't exactly work. The Dow has dropped 2,000 points since Congress approve those confidence-restoring funds.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said taxpayers would be kept in the loop about the billions that have already been sent to about 100 banks.

"We need oversight," he said. "We need transparency. I want it. We all want it."

But a month after the money was doled out, the chair of the congressional oversight panel told reporters she didn't yet know where the money was.

"I only got this job 14 days ago," Elizabeth Warren, who chairs the congressional oversight panel, said last week on MSNBC. "We don't have a fax machine. We don't have, you know, a phone yet."

They have phones now, and "we're up to a staff of five," Warren said.

The panel's job is to see that the bailout money is put to good use, but so far there's no mechanism to track how the banks are spending the money.

"If taxpayer dollars are going to be stuffed into these banks, then there are responsibilities that go with that," Warren said.

Some in Congress are now mad about how the bailout's working -- or not working.

Rep. Carolyn Malone, D-N.Y., called it a "dismal failure." Rep. Virginia Brown-Waite, R-Fla. said that "we are going down a rat hole."

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairs the committee that approved the bailout.

"Because we've been dissatisfied with the way in which they've spent the first half of this, we have blocked them from spending the second half," he said.