An imaginary center for "Federal Economic Rescue Network"

In the interest of making sense of the bailout, we continue to refine the maps. It's not easy to follow the money, which is not just our opinion. See for example, what the person heading the oversight panel--set up on October 3, we might point out that is just starting up-- that Congress appointed has to say.

According to Diana Henriques's, "Bailout Monitor Sees Lack of a Coherent Plan," in the Dec 1, NY Times, "The head of a new Congressional panel set up to monitor the gigantic federal bailout says the government still does not seem to have a coherent strategy for easing the financial crisis, despite the billions it has already spent in that effort."

Elizabeth Warren, chair of the oversight panel, also observes that there is no point of coordination for the government's many rescue plans. NetAge (that's us) to the rescue! To fill the gap, we have added some links to our OrgScope Economic Rescue Map, creating an "imaginary point of coordination" called <ECONOMIC RESCUE NETWORK>, which you'll see on the map in <brackets>. For the sake of logic, we've placed this node in the Executive Branch, between <FEDERAL AGENCIES> and the Vice-President (click image below to enlarge and see what we're talking about).

We've organized the rescue network into three (huge) groups:

1. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA, i.e., the $700 billion) and its associated structure of Treasury employees and contractors (which we've tracked through Treasury press releases) called the Office of Financial Stability (OFS);
2. The collection of major funding efforts under <RESCUE FUNDING>, including OFS, the Federal Reserve, FDIC, FHFA, and other spending ; and
3. A node connecting all the <KEY RESCUE AGENTS> themselves.

You can track data for the $8.5 trillion in commitments (of which just over $3 trillion has actually been spent) on our site at "Sources for Rescue Costs - Take 2 - Early December 2008." Again, thanks to Jay, we have another tip from Barry L. Ritholtz, posted Dec 2 08, "Calculating the Total Bailout Costs" from his blog The Big Picture.

We display this new OrgScope map in its "tree" mode, meaning that "nodes" with multiple connections show up multiple times, i.e., everywhere they're connected. Thus, someone with a matrix report to a second boss, would show up on the org charts of both the primary and the dotted-line bosses. Hence, the EESA relationships also show up when you drill down into the Treasury Department, while the Federal Reserve funding areas also hang under the Fed in the collection of <FEDERAL AGENCIES>. To see what lies beneath a particular node, meaning what comprises its sub-network,  click on the "+" mark in the lower-right part of the node's box. Click on the "-" sign to close it up.