Bailout (BAROFSKY, Neil)

“Bailout is a jaw-dropping play-by-play of how the Treasury Department bungled the financial bailouts... With a prosecutor’s logic and copious footnotes, Barofsky makes it clear things are rarely what they seem in Washington.” —USA Today

“A courageous, insightful book.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A must-read... It might seem remarkable that there’s more to say about our late Bailout Age. But there is more—a lot more... A damning account of how the Bush and Obama administrations handled the whole episode... crucial for taxpayers to understand.” —Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times

“Scathing... Taxpayers who feel helpless in the midst of the extended economic recession are likely to feel energized to metaphorically blow up the system after reading Barofsky’s account.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

In this bracing, page-turning account of his stranger-than-fiction baptism into the corrupted ways of Washington, Neil Barofsky offers an irrefutable insider indictment of the mishandling of the $700 billion TARP bailout fund. During the height of the financial crisis in 2008, Barofsky gave up his job in the esteemed U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York City to become the special inspector general overseeing the spending of the bailout money. But from day one his efforts to protect against fraud and to hold the big banks accountable were met with outright hostility from Treasury officials. Bailout is a riveting account of Barofsky’s plunge into the political meat grinder of Washington, and a vital revelation of just how captured by Wall Street our political system is and why the banks have only become bigger and more dangerous in the wake of the crisis.

NEIL BAROFSKY is currently a senior fellow at New York University School of Law. From December 2008 until March 2011 he served as the special inspector general in charge of oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).