Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street by Neil Barofsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I wanted to read this book for it was about choices made by cabinet and governmental employees, Federal Reserve chairmen, executive bankers, and the special investigator of TARP that I could previously only infer from posted information and news reports. I really wanted to know, "What were they thinking? It looks like they were thinking they needed short-term, urgent solutions and the solutions they considered were strongly influenced by their former job histories and future job prospects.
Barofsky's tone sometimes comes across as whining and petulant when he does not get the cooperation from Geithner and also does not get included when he raises objections about the roles of servicers and other potential conflicts of interests. Barofsky did a good job of preventing fraud, and feels there was more to be done. He was especially displeased with the program that was supposed to help 3-4 million people who faced foreclosure.
If you don't want to read the entire book, please at least read the afterword for a summary.

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