Website filed under FOIA for unredacted copies of 2 accounting firms' TARP contracts.

When the Treasury Department hired the accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCooopers LLP in October to work on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, it said the initial order was worth $191,469.
Four months later, the value of the contract - whose financial terms were blacked out by the Treasury Department - has grown to more than $1.6 million.

Similarly, the Treasury Department's agreement with the accounting firm of Ernst & Young has risen from the initial amount of $492,006 to nearly $2 million. The terms of that deal also have never been made public.

The revised contract values were reported in the Government Accountability Office's latest update on the transparency and oversight of the $700 billion financial-industry rescue program.
That same report shows that the law firm of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP has assumed responsibility for two contracts that the Treasury Department had awarded to Thacher Proffitt & Wood LLP, which dissolved in January.

One of those contracts was to advise the Treasury Department on the purchase of asset-backed securities, The other was to provide legal services on the government's loans to the auto industry.

The Treasury Department did not issue a press release on the latter contract. According to the GAO report, it was awarded on Nov. 7, 2008, with an initial value of $233,663. The agreement was modified twice in December, boosting the contract ceiling price to $1.46 million. The second adjustment, which added $1 million of that amount, came after Thacher Proffitt announced that it was shutting down.

Thacher Proffitt had been one of the leading law firms in the field of mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities. Its fortunes declined as the economic crisis set in and the market for those securities collapsed.

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