{"id":186875,"date":"2013-09-10T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-11T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/09\/10\/the-best-that-can-be-expected\/"},"modified":"2013-09-10T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-11T01:00:00","slug":"the-best-that-can-be-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/09\/10\/the-best-that-can-be-expected\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best that Can Be Expected\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I guess it was inevitable that former TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky would have to find work.<\/p>\n<p>Considering his background, taking a position in a large white shoe law firm tied in with finance was very likely and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/09\/09\/business\/barofsky-tarps-watchdog-to-join-jenner-block.html\">Jenner &amp; Block appears to be much less evil than many of their competitors<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Neil Barofsky, the former prosecutor who brought transparency and accountability to the federal government\u2019s 2008 bank bailout program as its first special inspector general, has joined Jenner &amp; Block, a law firm based in Chicago, as a partner.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Mr. Barofsky, who was appointed by George W. Bush to oversee the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program in late 2008, was a Washington outsider whose periodic reports on the program questioned Treasury officials\u2019 claims of its effectiveness. He and his office drew criticism at times from those officials, as a result.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Mr. Barofsky left his post in 2011 to teach at New York University\u2019s law school. He also wrote \u201cBailout,\u201d a scathing account of his time in Washington that highlighted the problem of regulators who he said were for the most part captured by the institutions they were supposed to police.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In an interview, Mr. Barofsky said that joining Jenner &amp; Block was a natural next step because the firm specialized in helping government agencies and major corporations with in-depth investigations of problematic practices. Such investigations, he said, are similar to the work he did at TARP. In addition, unlike many other large law firms, Jenner &amp; Block represents clients bringing suits against large financial institutions.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI can bring my experience investigating large financial institutions and complex financial transactions to a place that doesn\u2019t just do defense work in this area,\u201d Mr. Barofsky said. \u201cThis is an opportunity in private practice to help improve governance and have a truth-seeking role.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, we&#8217;ll see how this goes, and he has done a real service in reporting on the corruption of the TARP as IG, and in his book about the experience, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Bailout-Account-Washington-Abandoned-Rescuing\/dp\/B00D1G844O\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1378870549&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=neil+barofsky\">Bailout<\/a><\/i>, which has probably earned him the undying enmity of Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder, and Barack Obama, and he deserves a lot of credit and a not inconsiderable payday, for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I guess it was inevitable that former TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky would have to find work. Considering his background, taking a position in a large white shoe law firm tied in with finance was very likely and Jenner &amp; Block appears to be much less evil than many of their competitors: Neil Barofsky, the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[975,1004,978,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment","category-finance","category-politics","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186875"}],"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=186875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}