WASHINGTON — Government officials overseeing a $700 billion bailout acknowledged difficulties tracking the money and assessing the program's effectiveness.

The information was contained in a document, released today, of a Dec. 10 meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Board. The panel, headed by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, includes Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Securities and Exchange Commission chief Christopher Cox.

While offering no details, the document also mentioned officials at that meeting discussed "potential methods" of using the bailout program to help curb home foreclosures and ease problems in the housing market.

More broadly, the officials discussed "the difficulty of isolating the effects" of the bailout program "given the variety of policy actions taken by the U.S. government to support financial stability and promote economic growth."

The officials also noted the "difficulties associated with monitoring the use of specific funds" provided to individual financial institutions, according to the document.