Biting the 1% where it hurts

In this fascinating account of his trial-by-fire in Washington’s wicked ways, Neil Barofsky surfaces with a searing indictment as an insider of both the Bush and Obama administrations, dealing with the ongoing mishandling of the $700 billion TARP bailout fund. With behind-the-scenes experience, he repeatedly reveals proof of the deep degree to which our government officials sank to serve the interests of Wall Street firms at the expense of the 99%—and at the larger expense of real financial reform.

Recruited during the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, Barofsky shed his job as a prosecutor in the elite U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York City, where he convicted drug kingpins as well as Wall Street execs and perpetrators of mortgage fraud, to take on the job of the special inspector general in charge of oversight of the spending of the bailout money. From day one, his efforts to protect against fraud and to hold the big banks to account for how they spent taxpayer dollars were met with outright hostility from Treasury officials, top down, in charge of the bailouts.

Barofsky tells how, in aiding the interests of the bank, Treasury Secretary timothy Geithner and his sidekicks, worked with Wall Street banksters to design programs that would funnel huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to their firms and would have allowed them to game the markets and make huge profits with practically no risk or accountability, while repeatedly fighting off Barofsky’s attempts to put crucial fraud protections in place.