Watch Why the U.S. Government Bought ‘Troubled Assets’ on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
NEIL BAROFSKY is sounding off beyond his new book Bailout and creating a media firestorm along the way. It’s a very good thing.
Barofsky was a former federal prosecutor who became the special inspector general for TARP. He was appointed under Pres. Bush, then Obama kept him on.
He’s run into wall after wall inside government, because his idea of what needs to happen versus the cozy cronyism that keeps people in their government jobs or climbing the Wall Street ladder collided.
Government officials, he says, eagerly served Wall Street interests at the public’s expense, and regulators were captured by the very industry they were supposed to be regulating. He says he was warned about being too aggressive in his work, lest he jeopardize his future career. – Into the Bailout Buzz Saw
More from the an interview with financial writer wizard Gretchen Morgenson, from the end of July:
“So much of what’s wrong with Dodd-Frank is it trusts the regulators to be completely immune to the corrupting influences of the banks,” he said in the interview. “That’s so unrealistic. Congress has to take a meat cleaver to these banks and not trust regulators to do the job with a scalpel.”
Finally, Mr. Barofsky joins the ranks of those who believe that another crisis is likely because of the failed response to this one. “Incentives are baked into the system to take advantage of it for short-term profit,” he said. “The incentives are to cheat, and cheating is profitable because there are no consequences.”
Despite all of this, Mr. Barofsky ends on something of a positive note. Meaningful changes to our broken system may finally come about, he writes, if enough people get angry. His conclusion is this: “Only with this appropriate and justified rage can we sow the seeds for the types of reform that will one day break our system free from the corrupting grasp of the megabanks.”
The second video below gives you an idea of what’s going on in Washington and inside the big two political parties. It’s yet another example of why I question the idealistic notion that this is a country by and for the people anymore, asking at the top of this site “We the People?”
We simply don’t own our country anymore and neither electing Obama or Romney will change that fact.
The more troublesome question, with no pleasant or easy answer, is what can be done about it?
Watch Neil Barofsky on the Corrupting ‘Elixir of Power’ on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
I think “We the people” has been replaced — however accurate it was at any point — with “we the electorate,” thereby playing a legitimizing the system role; and “we the consumers,” which by now basically provides a legitimizing our existence role, at least within the corporate system which governs us.
Barofsky is really unloading, Joyce. It’s remarkable to watch & to read his critique, not to mention alarming, however unsurprising.
David Stockman. in the Reagan administration; John Cassidy, at the New Yorker Magazine and Mr. Barofsky all are modern day Cassandra’s and of course, nobody listens to Cassandra’s. ” Only with this appropriate and justified rage can we sow the seeds for the types of reform that will one day break our system free from the corrupting influence of the megabanks. ” Take a good look at the American voter Mr. Barofsky; if you can without getting sick. It’s a little like the old Doonsbury cartoon depiction of Reagan’s brain. Raw information comes in from the left; it’s processed and filtered in the center and clean useful information comes out the right. Only in Reagan’s brain, like the American voter’s, the circuits are burned out in the center so all that raw data comes flooding out the right side. I think it’s called the Tea Party.
Ah yes. You know, spending time on the fringe and doing my solid share of “pounding the pavement”, I don’t look at the question as troublesome. But your right, the answer is not pleasant and not easy. I remember on an occasion when we were protesting some Detroit city council nonsense in the early 90s, the Fruit of Islam was there. Their leader, a middle-aged former Marine, had dinner with us afterwards. I remember clear as tropical day what he told us:
Dramatic? Yes. Fear inducing? Quite. Could it happen? I have no idea. But the overall point is gotten. We haven’t really gotten sick and tired because there are still comforts. I would hope that refusing to vote for any of the Big 2 in large numbers would be a first, non-violent, and VERY STRONG step. It would really shake things up to the core. In my mind, no liberal or conservative should support the Democrats or Republicans because they do not represent. They are influenced way too easy by those that have self-serving interests with thick layer of dollar frosting. A massive NO CONFIDENCE vote in the Big 2 in all aspects would be ideal. Because the very campaigning in that atmosphere would bring to the surface all sorts of nonsense and insanity in stark color.
But again, we still have too many comforts. Too many distractions. Unfortunately it seems we have to wait until bread is $10 a loaf. Milk is $8.99 a gallon. Gas is $7.50 a gallon. Clothing marked up 40, 50, 60 percent. Drug shortages. Etc. Then it will be anger fueled by desperation. And we see where that can lead.