Mark Cuban has always been a fan of transparency.
The famously vocal billionaire owner of the basketball’s Dallas Mavericks doesn’t hide his emotions as he roots for his teams at games and takes on National Basketball Association bigwigs.
Similarly, he didn’t mask his enthusiasm when he competed – ultimately unsuccessfully – in the fifth season (2007) version of “Dancing with the Stars.”
Now Cuban is spending his money on behalf of another kind of transparency.
He’s founded the website bailoutsleuth.com, an effort to find out what’s actually happening to the government’s $700 million rescue plan for troubled financial institutions.
“Its job is simple,” Cuban wrote last month on his personal weblog, blogmaverick.com. “Keep an eye on our taxpayer dollars and call Bullshit when necessary.”
Bailoutsleuth is edited by Chrisopher Carey, a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch business reporter who also edits the Cuban-financed Sharesleuth.com.
Carey and Cuban graduated from Indiana University at Bloomington in the early 1980s.
Begun in July 2006, Sharesleuth, a self-described mix of journalism and “investigative blogging,” focuses on securities fraud.
Bailoutsleuth, so far, has stayed close to the rescue plan, following the money as it flows out from the Treasury.
Significantly, the website has not just looked at the banks that are getting rescue money, it’s also looking at all the subcontractors (accounting firms, etc.) that are being employed by the Treasury to administer the bailout.
In doing so, Bailoutsleuth has found the Treasury to be hiding key facts related to the bailout.
In several cases, the website has demonstrated that the publicly released contracts between Treasury and its subcontractors are filled with redactions, blacked-out portions.
Often, the blacked out sections contained the names and compensation of individuals earning money related to the bailout funds.
A case in point is the Treasury contract with the Bank of New York Mellon Corp. One sentence begins “The Financial Agent shall receive a monthly fee.” The rest of the sentence and paragraph is blacked out by the Treasury.
“If they’re completely transparent, why in the world would they redact the rates they’re paying?” Cuban asked during an interview conducted with “Planet Money,” the National Public Radio podcast devoted to helping listeners understand the ins and outs of the economic crisis.
Cuban, who is 50, is not a disinterested party when it comes to the financial markets.
He made his fortune with the web portal Broadcast.com, selling it to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock in 1999 before the Internet bubble burst.
He now owns stakes in several companies, including HDNet and Lions Gate, and he’s one of the bidders seeking to purchase baseball’s Chicago Cubs.
Cuban ranked 161st on the 2008 Forbes list of richest Americans, with an estimated worth of $2.6 billion.
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