Congressional Oversight Panel - COP

The U.S. Congress. They’re pretty useless. They have a lower approval rating than cockroaches, Genghis Khan, and Nickelback.

Our great American institution proves that, if you lie enough to people, you can have a share of the nation's power. And there's nothing more powerful than the purse of the United States.

In the wake of the U.S. Financial Crisis, our government created something known as the Congressional Oversight Panel. Think of it as a group of helicopter parents who were overseeing the U.S. Treasury Department's efforts to stabilize the U.S. economy. This panel coincided with the launch of the Office of Stabilization (OFS) in the Treasury Department that initiated the deployment of more than $700 billion in stimulus funds as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The government bought a lot of crappy mortgage-backed securities and injected capital into the banking system to prevent a run on financial institutions.

The COP shutdown in 2011 after it released a report on the Treasury's efforts. The panel said that TARP created a significant moral hazard and made the problem of “Too Big to Fail” banks...even worse.