FAQ
Here are the answers to some questions you might have about the bailout and this project.
What do you mean by “the bailout” ?
Who is behind this project and who is funding it?
- What do you mean by “the bailout”?
“The bailout” refers to actions related to the transfer of public wealth to financial institutions in light of the financial crisis – spanning from former-Treasury Secretary Paulson’s original proposal to Congress in September of 2008 to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to President Obama’s “Financial Stability Plan.”
“The bailout” includes actions taken by all federal agencies as part of the plan to save the financial sector, including actions taken by the Federal Reserve, Department of the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and other government agencies. “The bailout” does not include money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the stimulus bill.
- Who is behind this project and who is funding it?
BailoutWatch.net is maintained by OpenTheGovernment.org as a part of the Bailout Watch project. The project is a collaborative effort by several non-profit organizations to track and analyze the government’s actions during the unprecedented transpfer of wealth from the public sector to financial institutions and other entities labeled “too big to fail.” A list of participating organizations is available here. The project is supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation.
OpenTheGovernment.org is a broad-based coalition of over 70 organizations from across the ideological spectrum. The coaltion includes consumer and good government groups, librarians, environmentalists, labor, journalists, scientists and others united to push back governmental secrecy and promote openness. The mission of OpenTheGovernment.org is to make government more open to achieve accountability, security, and safety.