My story today is about the warrants we taxpayers received from many of the financial institutions which received TARP money to help shore up their balance sheets. These warrants give the government the right to buy common shares in the institutions at set prices anytime over the next 10 years. Most are under water, that is, the current stock price is less than the warrant's "strike" price. But some, notably from banks which have participated in the recent rally, are already "in the money."

As banks pay back their TARP money, what will become of the warrants? That is a question which will be debated in Washington over the next few months. One thing the Obama administration is doing is taking transparency to heart. Virtually all the documents surrounding the financial bailout are available online for anyone to see. Start at www.financialstability.gov.

The problem is there are zillions of documents. Each of the 500 or so financial instructions which received TARP money, for example, has a set of contracts with all the details. These were negotiated on a case-by-case basis and there are a lot of differences between them. I took a detailed look at the Goldman Sach's contract in researching today's story. It is more than 100 pages long.

There is some help for those who wish to study these matters. The Pew Charitable Trusts have funded a web site, www.subsidyscope.com, where they are aggregating the data from all these documents, as well as other government subsidy programs. The goal, according to Deputy Director Doug Hamilton, is to provide "good information for the public so they can decide whether or not a subsidy makes sense."

The Pew site does perform some analysis, but is strictly non-partisan and refuses to take a position. Believe me, I know. I thought I could get Hamilton to state an opinion reached after analyzing the data, but he wouldn't budge.