{"id":184149,"date":"2012-07-20T19:24:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-21T00:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/07\/20\/i-gotta-read-this-book\/"},"modified":"2012-07-20T19:24:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-21T00:24:00","slug":"i-gotta-read-this-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/07\/20\/i-gotta-read-this-book\/","title":{"rendered":"I Gotta Read This Book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Neil Barkofsky&#8217;s book on his experiences monitoring the TARP, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.firedoglake.com\/2012\/07\/20\/barofsky-book-geithner-confirmed-in-2009-that-hamp-was-designed-for-banks-to-spread-out-foreclosures\/\"><i>Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street<\/i><\/a>, and the Bush administration comes off better than the Obama administration:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>The Huffington Post described a scene in a forthcoming book by Neil Barofsky, the former Special Inspector General of TARP, where Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner delivered a string of F-bombs during a discussion about transparency. I\u2019ve read the book, and while that\u2019s an amusing diversion, it\u2019s nowhere near the headline story.<\/p>\n<p>The important moment in the book for me comes conveniently after Barofsky recounts this FDL News item, one of my HAMP horror stories. Barofsky shows how HAMP\u2019s faulty design led to all sorts of problems like this, with trapped borrowers, extended trial payments, no-doc modifications, and eventually unnecessary foreclosures. Barofsky mused that Treasury didn\u2019t care about the suffering of borrowers under HAMP, and the issue came up in a meeting with the Treasury Secretary, which was also attended by Elizabeth Warren, then the head of the Congressional Oversight Panel, another TARP watchdog.<\/p>\n<p>Warren asked Geithner repeatedly about HAMP. After several evasions, Geithner said about the banks, \u201cWe estimate that they can handle ten million foreclosures, over time\u2026 this program will help foam the runway for them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is a revelatory moment for Barofsky in the book, and should be for everyone reading. Geithner\u2019s concern, first of all, was with how the banks would respond to the program, not how homeowners would respond to it. In fact, homeowners are quite besides the point. Regardless of their situation, they will be one of the 10 million foreclosures, in Geithner\u2019s construction. His goal was merely to space out the foreclosures and give the banks time to earn their way back to health, mostly through the other parts of the bailout, that enabled them to earn profits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I will note that the Cossacks work for the Czar, and notwithstanding all the turnover on the economic side of his cabinet, Geithner has been a constant.<\/p>\n<p>This is going on because this is what Obama wants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neil Barkofsky&#8217;s book on his experiences monitoring the TARP, Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, and the Bush administration comes off better than the Obama administration: The Huffington Post described a scene in a forthcoming book by Neil Barofsky, the former Special Inspector General of TARP, where &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1142,970,969,1004,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-corruption","category-evil","category-finance","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}