A New Hellhound of Wall Street

BOOK REVIEW

Neil Barofsky’s book Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street says it all in the title. A lot of us have already come to the opinion expressed in Barofsky’s title, just based on our observation of our landscape, littered as it is with bankrupt businesses and lost homes; but few, not being inside the D.C. beltway, would believe that the atmosphere in Washington could be as arrogant and dismissive of the interests of the rest of the country as Barofsky details it. His perspective on the scene is from a perfect vantage point: that of the Special Inspector General of TARP, the fund created to save us from financial meltdown in 2008. He, a true outsider, was appointed by President Bush through an unusual agreement between Democrats and Republicans who were both fearful of the potential vul