Six weeks since Congress approved the financial services bailout legislation, the administration has committed $290 billion of the $700 billion Congress gave it to work with.

Originally intended for purchasing troubled mortgage assets, it has instead been used to purchase shares of troubled firms, and it may soon be used for automakers and heaven knows what else.

Now the Washington Post reports:

Yet for all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste. Nor has the first monitoring report required by lawmakers been completed, though the initial deadline has passed.

“It’s a mess,” said Eric M. Thorson, the Treasury Department’s inspector general, who has been working to oversee the bailout program until the newly created position of special inspector general is filled. “I don’t think anyone understands right now how we’re going to do proper oversight of this thing.”

We already know that the Treasury Department has been working to obscure what it’s doing.

Congress is asleep at the switch, and the “oversight” procedures put into the bailout bill have proved to be a paper tiger.