Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street [Kindle Edition]

Neil Barofsky (Author)

Book Description

In this riveting account of the mishandling of the TARP bailout fund, a former federal prosecutor offers behind-the-scenes proof of the corrupt ways Washington officials serve the interests of Wall Street.

In this bracing, page-turning account of his stranger-than-fiction baptism into the corrupted ways of Washington, Neil Barofsky offers an irrefutable insider indictment of the mishandling of the $700 billion TARP bailout fund. During the height of the financial crisis in 2008, Barofsky gave up his job in the esteemed US Attorney’s Office in New York City to become the special inspector general overseeing the spending of the bailout money. But from day one his efforts to protect against fraud and to hold the big banks accountable were met with outright hostility from Treasury officials. Bailout is a riveting account of Barofsky’s plunge into the political meat grinder of Washington, and a vital revelation of just how captured by Wall Street our political system is and why the banks have only become bigger and more dangerous in the wake of the crisis.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Bailout is a jaw-dropping play-by-play of how the Treasury Department bungled the financial bailouts… With a prosecutor's logic and copious footnotes, Barofsky makes it clear things are rarely what they seem in Washington.”

— USA Today

“[Bailout] is an interesting behind-the-scenes account of how Washington tried to save the economy… [and] an enjoyable tale of how a prosecutor of Colombian drug gangs got drafted for the thankless task of policing a $700 billion bailout from a dank basement office of the Treasury.”

— Fortune

“[An] everyman account of the pervasive cynicism and insider-dealing of the D.C. establishment.”

— The American Spectator

“[One] of our favorite business books so far this year…The former special inspector general policing the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program lifts the lid on the U.S. Treasury and settles scores… [an] illuminating memoir.”

— Bloomberg Businessweek

“A damning indictment of the Obama administration's execution of the TARP program.”

— Washington Examiner

“A quick, intense, read.”

— Business Insider

“[Barofsky] set out to account for the TARP spending in a transparent, nonpartisan manner. However, as he demonstrates in his energetically written first-person account, he and his staff met resistance every time they tried to share the truth with Congress, the White House and the American public… a courageous, insightful book that offers no cause for optimism.”

— Kirkus (starred review)

“Blistering in its assessment of the Treasury Department's handling of the bailouts.”

— Huffington Post

“In his scathing new book, Barofsky says taxpayers got shafted while the rich got richer… a true expose…. Taxpayers who feel helpless in the midst of the extended economic recession are likely to feel energized to metaphorically blow up the system after reading Barofsky’s account.”

— St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“[An] explosive account of the mishandling of the Troubled Asset Relief Program funds.”

— Fort Worth Star-Telegram

About the Author

Neil Barofsky is currently a Senior Fellow at NYU Law School. From November 2008 until February 2011, he was the Special Inspector General in charge of oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Before that he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. This is his first book.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 1383 KB
• Print Length: 290 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1451684932
• Publisher: Free Press; Reprint edition (July 24, 2012)
• Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00818J57W
• Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,051 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #22 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Americas > United States > 21st Century
  • #42 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Political Science > History & Theory
  • #46 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > United States > Federal Government

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

168 of 189 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "The American People Should Lose Faith in their Government." July 24, 2012

By James R. Holland TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

In the last couple of months, I've read and reviewed another book by a former Goldman Sacks banker who also thought the Wall Street banks had gone to heck in a hand basket. In his book, "Survival Investing: How to Prosper Amid Thieving Banks and Corrupt Governments," John Talbott entitled one of the chapters "Corruption In The Banks" and another one "Only an Idiot Would Lend to a Sovereign Government." At that time I thought maybe that author was just spewing "sour grapes" over some unknown experiences in his own past. Not any more. This book by Neil Barofsky the Special Presidential Inspector General for TARP, makes it clear John Talbott's opinions of the mess corruption has made of the banking system was right on the mark.
In "Bailout" Neil Brofsky, who was in a position to know the facts, documents his own 19-month tenure trying to clean up some of the messes created by the much too cozy relationships between Wall Street and government. More importantly he points out that the government is so big that its a bureaucracy within bureaucracies that can't do anything but grow and spend more money. The only real cure would be to take meat clever to the bureacracy and cut it down to a size that might actually be able to serve the citizens of America.
This expose is clearly described and documented in a dozen chapters with titles such as "Fraud 101, Hank Wants to Make It Work, The Lapdog, the Watchdog and the Junkyard Dog, I Won't Lie for You, Drinking the Wall Street Kool-Aid, The worst Thing That happens, We Go Back Home, By Wall Street for Wall Street, Foaming the Runway, The Audacity of Math, The Essential $7,700 Kitchen Assistant, Treasury's Backseat Driver, Happy Endings" and an "afterword, and detailed Notes and Index section. Its easy, but maddening reading. It's a first-person memoir of the author's experiences working to help over-see the government's TARP program.
Barofsky had already had some experience with how Washington works from his successful investigations of FARC drug distribution cases. He summed it up in a conversation with one of his fellow agents in Bogotá. "I'll tell you what I learned from this whole thing. I will never, ever take a job in Washington. The people down there don't care about justice or protecting the United States. It's all about bullsh*t, ego, politics, turf, and credit. I had no idea at the time how wrong I was about myself and how right I was about Washington."
Senator Joseph Biden had already warned him about Washington. "Neil, you know what the biggest single hurdle is to enforcing the narcotics laws internationally?"
"What, Senator?"
"Not the traffickers. Not the corruption. The State Department. The United States State Department."
Once he was indeeed working in Washington he found more truths. Mainly, that most politicians and bureaucrats didn't have a clue or want to.
This entire book is filled with his disappointments with the United States Government. "Although the idea behind Inspector Generals was that they would be fiercely independent watchdogs. I soon learned that they were mostly just like any other government agency. As such their priorities were, in order of importance: maintaining and hopefully increasing their budget; giving the appearance of activity; and not making too many waves."
Even when offering to help his new department get organized all the other departments offering to help expected to be paid for their services and paid the absolute most money they could squeeze out of their fellow government departments. Saving tax payer money wasn't one of their goals.
While the author managed to provide some valuable information that saved the government more than $550 million dollars, sent several crooks to jail and pointed out many of the flaws in Dodd-Frank and other Treasury programs, he was depressed that once he left, the Treasury dismissed most of his warnings and ideas. There are so many specific details provided in this short memoir that the reader will have to actually read the book to find out more about them. One long quote in the book's afterword summed up much of what the author learned.
"I now realize that the American people should lose faith in their government. They should deplore the captured politicians and regulators who took their taxpayer dollars and distributed them to the banks without insisting that hey be accountable for how the bailout money was spent. They should be revolted by the financial system that rewards failure and protects the fortunes of those who drove the system to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again. They should be enraged by broken promises to Main Street and the unending protection of Wall Street."
One of the more hopeful current events that encouraged the author was that both the Tea Party and some of the serious Occupy Wall Streeters see the obvious perils of the corruption that is rampant between much of Wall Street and its government regulators. There is hope for America when the public has begun to understand the dangers of such conspiracies. The government is too big and its only interested in protecting its turf, increasing its budget and covering its ass. The only real cure will be to cut away as much of the government fat as is humanly possilbe and many of the public servants that will need to do the clean-up aren't up to the job and their heart and personal career prospects preclude them from actually completing the task.
This is an interesting and enlightening page-turner written in such a way to make the very complicated and often boring financial material understandable. It's also a primer on why so little gets done in the Washington, D.C. It, like the Wall Street banks, is too big to be allowed to fail.

51 of 56 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Whether homeowners were intentionally or unintentionally screwed July 27, 2012

By Citizen John TOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Neil Barofsky oversaw the $700 billion dollar TARP program as the Special United States Treasury Department Inspector General. Barofsky, a democrat, was appointed by Bush and saw no difference between that administration and the Obama administration with regard to their deferential treatment of the big banks.

No strings were attached to the money. Top bankers used it to pay record bonuses, among other things. The magnitude of riches bestowed upon these elites stirs the imagination of witnesses such as Barofsky, who can't seem to get over it. It was the largest single transfer of wealth in our nation's history.

This book demonstrates a deep and continuing bias to favor large banks, especially by the Treasury Department. It doesn't matter which party holds the administrative branch. Stated goals of giving money straight to the banks included to get lending going again. Yet nothing was done to tie money freely given to banks to any performance in lending. In large part because of this, foreclosures even now continue unabated and people cannot readily sell their homes yet.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner looks really bad in this book. He's basically portrayed as top squeezer of homeowners through concentrated use of deflation. Personally I didn't understand any motive for Geithner to deliberately squeeze families. Rather, I suspect the squeeze had to happen if the big bankers were to maximally benefit at the time. In other words, it seemed to me that homeowners were just in the wrong place and the wrong time, victims of the larger economic-political system.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered."

55 of 63 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "BEHIND THE SCENES DETAILS ON HOW WALL STREET WAS SAVED!" July 24, 2012

By Geraldine Ahearn TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Neil Barofsky is a Senior Fellow at N.Y.U. School Of Law, a Special Inspector General, and a Federal Prosecutor who delivers information on the indictment of the Bush and Obama administrations in the mishandling of the $700 billion TARP bailout fund. A vivid, behind-the-scenes is given in detailed description as it portrays proof of the extreme degree to which government officials went out of their way to serve the interests of Wall Street firms at the expense of the public. In addition, the author presents information on the battle for fraud protection and the investigations conducted, and the responsibility upon Big Banks in the manner of spending taxpayer money. Also, facts are provided on effective financial reform. Educational and interesting and very important for all Americans to learn how these issues can affect both the economy and the welfare of our nation!