{"id":187683,"date":"2011-04-05T20:31:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-06T01:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/04\/05\/neil-barofsky-opening-up-a-jar-of-whup-ass-on-timmy-eddie-haskell-geithner\/"},"modified":"2011-04-05T20:31:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-06T01:31:00","slug":"neil-barofsky-opening-up-a-jar-of-whup-ass-on-timmy-eddie-haskell-geithner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/04\/05\/neil-barofsky-opening-up-a-jar-of-whup-ass-on-timmy-eddie-haskell-geithner\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil Barofsky Opening Up a Jar of Whup Ass on Timmy &#8220;Eddie Haskell&#8221; Geithner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, it&#8217;s from a week ago, but it&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/03\/30\/opinion\/30barofsky.html\">must read<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>TWO and a half years ago, Congress passed the legislation that bailed out the country\u2019s banks. The government has declared its mission accomplished, calling the program remarkably effective \u201cby any objective measure.\u201d On my last day as the special inspector general of the bailout program, I regret to say that I strongly disagree. The bank bailout, more formally called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, failed to meet some of its most important goals.<\/p>\n<p>From the perspective of the largest financial institutions, the glowing assessment is warranted: billions of dollars in taxpayer money allowed institutions that were on the brink of collapse not only to survive but even to flourish. These banks now enjoy record profits and the seemingly permanent competitive advantage that accompanies being deemed \u201ctoo big to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Though there is no question that the country benefited by avoiding a meltdown of the financial system, this cannot be the only yardstick by which TARP\u2019s legacy is measured. The legislation that created TARP, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, had far broader goals, including protecting home values and preserving homeownership.<\/p>\n<p>These Main Street-oriented goals were not, as the Treasury Department is now suggesting, mere window dressing that needed only to be taken \u201cinto account.\u201d Rather, they were a central part of the compromise with reluctant members of Congress to cast a vote that in many cases proved to be political suicide.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just go read the it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yes, it&#8217;s from a week ago, but it&#8217;s a must read: TWO and a half years ago, Congress passed the legislation that bailed out the country\u2019s banks. The government has declared its mission accomplished, calling the program remarkably effective \u201cby any objective measure.\u201d On my last day as the special inspector general of the bailout &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,970,1004,1002,1020,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress","category-corruption","category-finance","category-good-writing","category-legislation","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187683"}],"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=187683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}