Barofsky, a lifelong Democrat who was drafted by Hank Paulson, George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary, arrived in D.C. late 2008, a few months after the law went into effect. He had been a superstar prosecutor in U.S. Attorney’s office in New York, busting Columbian drug lords. “When I came in I thought my real job would be doing fraud prosecutions, putting bad people who had stolen from TARP in jail.”
But once he got to Washington and began digging into how TARP was structured—or, in fact, not structured—he realized he had to use his audit power to pressure regulators into reviewing procedures and making radical changes. His goal was greater transparency, a way to trace where the early TARP money had gone and make sure that banks and huge corporations like AIG wouldn’t be given billions more with no strings attached. ”There was this overriding sense, I mean people up and down the chain of command just said it to me, that that wasn’t important.” To Barofsky, the 2009 AIG bonus scandal, in which the Treasury Department authorized $168 million in payouts to the giant insurer, was a perfect example. “No one wanted me to write what I did, but I wasn’t hired to be a cheerleader,” he says.
Interesting stuff. It was all for Obama’s buddies, no questions asked.
I’ve got a lot of questions I’d like to ask this guy.