March 1, 2014 --

LPR has concluded that Neil Barofsky is just the person who, as president, will revitalize the "common good" principles set forth in Federalist Paper No. 57. LPR reached this conclusion on reading the paperback version of Barofsky's account of his 27 months as special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP): Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street (Free Press paperback). (When LPR first heard about TARP, seemed the acronym should stand for "To Assist Rich People.") It is not clear when the badmouthing of Barofsky by the Washington establishment began, but Barofsky indicates that by the autumn of 2010, he was viewed by Treasury officials as, among other nasty things, "'a closet Republican.'"

LPR has a hunch that zealous leftists today, reading, and fuming over, Bailout, would accuse Barofsky of actually being an anti-government Tea Party person. He does acknowledge, in the Afterword, that his experience trying to apply oversight to TARP made him "realize that the American people should [italics in original] lose faith in their government[,]...deplore the captured politicians and regulators who took their taxpayer dollars and distributed them to the banks without insisting that they be accountable for how the bailout money was spent[,]... [and] be revolted by a financial system that rewards failure and protects the fortunes of those who drove the system to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again." Barofsky suggests to LPR that "Too Big To Fail" describes a form of "risk-free capitalism," and certainly encompasses the notion that financial matters as seen by the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street are too complex to be understood by mere mortals and, therefore, are Too Complex to be Verified by those outside the plutocratic priesthood. Well, all of us are -- to borrow a phrase cited by Barofsky -- justified in being "personally offended" by the arrogance of the plutocrats and their acolytes.

LPR also has a hunch that leftist zealots will be enraged by the accolades given by Barofsky, a life-long Democrat, to Senator Chuck Grassley for help in breaking through obstacles erected by the Treasury Department, under Secretary Timothy Geithner. Apparently, senior officials at Treasury spent time trying to come up with creative ideas to block Barofsky from providing the TARP oversight responsibilities given the special inspector general under the TARP statute. One such notion was to request the Justice Department to render an opinion that Barofsky, as independent of the Treasury secretary, could not be given information deemed confidential by the secretary. Senator Grassley came to the rescue, holding up Senate confirmation of a new Treasury general counsel until Treasury withdrew its request for a Justice Department opinion on the nature of Barofsky's role.

And, too, leftist zealots would likely agree with Rep. Barney Frank, who got really annoyed, notwithstanding his previous support for Barofsky, when Barofsky decided to total up the total government bailout commitments and found that they added up to $23.7 trillion. Barofsky relates that Frank told him, among other things: "'Let the Republicans add up the number, twist it the way they want to, misrepresent what you said. But don't do their political dirty work for them.'"

Throughout the book, Barofsky makes it clear that he had great difficulty trying to get Treasury to be transparent as to how it distributed TARP funds. With this Frank anecdote (no pun intended), Barofsky leaves it to the reader to conclude that among the political bigots in Washington, actions in support of transparency are regarded as "political dirty work."

Barofsky relates how he became dismayed when the realities of a program aimed at modifying mortgages to keep homeowners from getting foreclosed were made clear to him months after President Obama announced the program -- Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).

When the president announced the program, he said that it would help three to four million homeowners get mortgage modifications. Barofsky was later told by the TARP head, Herb Allison, that the program was intended merely to offer modifications. Barosky cited, as an example of Treasury's "incentive for bad behavior," its approval of actions by mortgage servicers preparing foreclosure proceedings "at the exact time that they were supposedly processing mortgage trial modifications." For LPR, the Obama administration's approach to HAMP was forerunner to the administration's handling of Obamacare. But note that nowhere in Bailout does Barofsky directly criticize President Obama, although he makes it clear that the White House had come to view him as a political enemy -- with The Washington Post carrying water for the White House. And yet, Barofsky lauds as "a classy gesture" the White House statement marking his resignation March 2011. The statement pointed to Barofsky's "'strong oversight'" and added that it was "'grateful'" for his service. Sure -- and people can keep their doctors under Obamacare.