Free Republic

IT might seem remarkable that there’s more to say about our late Bailout Age. But there is more — a lot more. Nearly four years after Washington began its huge rescues of banks with taxpayer dollars, an important player in this, one of the great financial dramas of all time, is offering a damning account of how the Bush and Obama administrations handled the whole episode. He is Neil Barofsky. Remember him — the man whose job it was to police the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program? And his new account, a book titled “Bailout” (Free Press), to be...

The government’s special inspector general in charge of oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (the “TARP” bank bailouts) – Neil M. Barofsky – wrote a stunning editorial for Bloomberg yesterday, concluding: Americans should lose faith in their government. They should deplore the captured politicians and regulators who distributed tax dollars to the banks without insisting that they be accountable. The American people should be revolted by a financial system that rewards failure and protects those who drove it to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again. Only with this appropriate and justified rage can we hope...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A government official says the financial overhaul enacted last summer won't deliver on its promise to end bailouts. .. in a report released Tuesday that recent comments by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other top regulators suggest the government would rescue banks if one of them threatened the broader financial system. ... But Barofsky notes that the bailout solidified the view among investors and bankers that the government will continue to save banks whose failures threaten to upend the financial system. The handful of largest banks got bigger during the crisis by absorbing weaker rivals. A single...

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HARPS on the need to make Wall Street accountable through better oversight and more transparent reporting. Yet the White House blew its stack last week when an independent review asserted that its $700 billion bailout of Wall Street lacked adequate oversight and transparency! Sigh. In D.C., hypocrisy is the most important product. And nastiness ranks a close second. The White House administered a knee-capping in response to the quarterly report to Congress by the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, fondly known as Sigtarp. The Sig in Sigtarp is Neil M....

As many as 100,000 Americans who lost their jobs, or will soon, because of GM and Chrysler dealership closings can thank Barack Obama and his "mandate for shared sacrifice," according to a top Obama official. In a scathing report on the federal auto industry bailout, Special Inspector General Neil M. Barofsky notes that the Obama administration rejected initial automaker plans which would have required relatively minimal dealership closings, insisting instead on far more drastic cuts -- as many as two thousand dealerships between the two corporations. (snip) And Barofsky's report even questions whether the closures would lead to any real...

...I’m torn, here. GM is, at best, deliberately misleading the public; at worst, the company is outright lying to us. I want to suggest a boycott of GM cars (for those who would actually consider buying a GM car in the first place), but if nobody buys their cars, they’ll never pay back the TARP money. …Hell, they’ll never pay it back anyway. Go ahead and boycott ‘em!

This is the transcript from a portion of the April 21, 2010 interview from Neil Cavuto, SVP of Business News, with Neil Barofsky, Treasury Special Inspector General of TARP on mortgage modifications, regulations, and GM's announcement on "repaying" their loan: Neil: Today's announcement by general motors that it's paid back its tarp loan in full, in full, is a huge accomplishment. Is it? Barofsky: Well, it's good news they're paying back the loan. The one thing a lot of people overlook with this is where they got the money to pay the loan. It isn't from earnings. They didn't earn...

The $700 billion bailout program for the financial industry has so far done little to boost bank lending, aid small businesses or reduce home foreclosures, a top government watchdog said in a report. Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general over the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), said in a report that while the bailout has helped stabilize the financial system, many of the program's original goals have not been met. "Lending continues to decrease, month after month, and the TARP program designed specifically to address small-business lending — announced in March 2009 — has still not been implemented by Treasury,"...

When the New York Fed renegotiated its original $85 billion deal to bail out AIG last year, it "effectively" transferred tens of billions dollars of cash from the federal government directly into the coffers of the AIG’s counterparties, according to an audit by TARP Inspector General Neil M. Barofsky.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The government has spent trillions to rescue the banking system from the brink of disaster, but the biggest cost may be the loss in the government's credibility from an understandably distrustful and angry public, according to a quarterly report released Wednesday by the congressional watchdog over the bank bailout.

Barofsky, reviewing the first big bailouts to 9 firms, concludes that the government was too rosy to the public about the banks' health. WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- A government watchdog says federal officials weren't entirely honest with the public about the health of the first 9 financial firms that got federal bailouts, according to a report released Monday. Bailout special inspector general Neil Barofsky says in an audit that Treasury Department officials painted an overly rosy picture, creating "unrealistic expectations," when they called the first bailout banks "healthy" institutions that would be able to lend more with government help. "It is...

At the heart of the clash between TARP watchdog Neil Barofsky and his critics in the Obama administration is that Barofsky thinks that the bailout should be publicly accountable for meeting its public goal: Keeping banks lending money to fuel the economy. The Treasury Department, meanwhile, is happy with the secret goal--recapitalizing banks and consolidating weak banks with stronger ones. This dichotomy is vividly portrayed in this essay by Glen Greenwald: Barofsky wants to compel banks to account for those [TARP] funds and then publicize that information, while the administration opposes such efforts, claiming that accounting for TARP monies is...

The Special Inspector General for TARP, Neil Barofsky, made headlines this week when he estimated that the Obama administration had committed itself to spending as much as $24,000,000,000,000 to fix the American economy. The Treasury fired back at its own SIGTARP, saying that Barofsky inflated the numbers and that they had no intention of spending almost twice America’s annual GDP. In an interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper, Barofsky explains that the White House currently has dozens of programs dispensing cash, and that the caps on all of those add up to the $24-trillion mark:

President Barack Obama (AP Photo) (CNSNews.com) – The ousted inspector general who reported that his office found misuse of AmeriCorps funds granted to a charity run by a political ally of President Barack Obama sees an assault on the institution of government watchdogs, noting that besides himself, the inspectors general in both the Treasury Department and the International Trade Commission (ITC) have faced reported hurdles in doing their jobs. He says he wants Congress to hold a hearing on his firing. “I certainly don’t know the facts about any of the other IGs. But I don’t think you can find in the history of IGs such an administration attack on...

Corruption is a strong word, but it appears warranted given the two stories of import this weekend. First, on the firing of inspectors general: WASHINGTON - -- He was appointed with fanfare as the public watchdog over the government's multi-billion dollar bailout of the nation's financial system. But now Neil Barofsky is embroiled in a dispute with the Obama administration that delayed one recent inquiry and sparked questions about his ability to freely investigate. Treasury, you see, is refusing to turn over documents - items that Barofsky believes he needs to do his job properly. Mr. Barofsky's job is, for...

WASHINGTON - -- He was appointed with fanfare as the public watchdog over the government's multi-billion dollar bailout of the nation's financial system. But now Neil Barofsky is embroiled in a dispute with the Obama administration that delayed one recent inquiry and sparked questions about his ability to freely investigate. The disagreement stems from a claim by the Treasury Department that Barofsky is not entirely independent of the agency he is assigned to examine ¿ a claim that has prompted a stern letter from a Republican senator warning that agency officials are encroaching on the integrity of an office created...

WASHINGTON - -- He was appointed with fanfare as the public watchdog over the government's multi-billion dollar bailout of the nation's financial system. But now Neil Barofsky is embroiled in a dispute with the Obama administration that delayed one recent inquiry and sparked questions about his ability to freely investigate. The disagreement stems from a claim by the Treasury Department that Barofsky is not entirely independent of the agency he is assigned to examine ¿ a claim that has prompted a stern letter from a Republican senator warning that agency officials are encroaching on the integrity of an office created...

April 24, 2009, 1:42 a.m. TARP Looking More Criminal by the MinuteThe issue of TARP corruption may now extend from corporate CEOs and federal regulators to New York’s attorney general. By Donald Luskin Is TARP a criminal enterprise? When a CNBC producer called me on Wednesday to see if I’d debate that question on the Kudlow Report that evening, I thought the allegation was ridiculous. How could the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Assets Relief Program to rescue the banking system possibly be compared to the Sopranos? But now I’m not so sure. Yesterday’s sensational claims by New York Attorney General...

(ChattahBox)—Bailout cop, Inspector General Neil Barofsky, released a blistering 250-page report today, indicating he is pursuing at least 20 TARP criminal investigations for possible fraud, insider trading, tax violations, collusion, kick-back schemes and even, money laundering. The report also indicated it would be conducting at least a dozen financial audits of troubled banks and other institutions receiving bailout funds.