The Congressional Oversight Panel was set up to oversee the Treasury Department's implementation of TARP and the effectiveness of distributing federal bailout money.  Chair Elizabeth Warren and the panel have kept their process highly transparent--something they've called on the Treasury Department to do as well.  Earlier this month they brought in experts on notable banking crises of the last 100 years, and had them share lessons on goverment responses to those crises.  The Savings and Loan collapse of the 1980s, Japan's banking crisis and its monetary policy reaction in the 1990s, Sweden's nationalization of banks--also in the 1990s, and of course the Great Depression, were the lead topics.  The experts were Bo Lundgren, Director General, Swedish National Debt Office and Former Swedish Minister of Financial and Fiscal Affairs; Richard Katz, Editor-in-Chief, The Oriental Economist and author of Japan: The System That Soured—The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Economic Miracle and Japanese Phoenix; David C. Cooke, former executive director of Resolution Trust Corporation; and Eugene White, professor of economics, Rutgers University, and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.