Fallout From the Bungled Bank Bailout
The financial meltdown and subsequent bailout have dampened Americans' faith in government and stirred widespread outrage. Neil Barofsky, who once served as special inspector general in charge of oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, says that anger may point the way toward reform.
The financial meltdown and subsequent bailout have dampened Americans’ faith in government and stirred widespread outrage. Neil Barofsky, who once served as special inspector general in charge of oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, says that anger may point the way toward reform.
In an Op-Ed piece on Bloomberg’s website on Monday, Barofsky discusses the many ways the government bungled TARP — and how anger from the 99 percent may bring about change.
— Posted by Tracy Bloom.
WAIT BEFORE YOU GO...Neil Barofsky via Bloomberg:
Treasury’s focus on TARP’s financial costs, of course, detracts from its significant nonfinancial costs, including the worsening of “too big to fail” and the lost opportunity to help struggling homeowners. But a separate cost — the loss of many Americans’ faith in their government — may still yield a major benefit.
The missteps by Treasury have produced a valuable byproduct: the widespread anger that may contain the only hope for meaningful reform. Americans should lose faith in their government. They should deplore the captured politicians and regulators who distributed tax dollars to the banks without insisting that they be accountable. The American people should be revolted by a financial system that rewards failure and protects those who drove it to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again.
Only with this appropriate and justified rage can we hope for the type of reform that will one day break our system free from the corrupting grasp of the megabanks.
This year, the ground feels uncertain — facts are buried and those in power are working to keep them hidden. Now more than ever, independent journalism must go beneath the surface.
At Truthdig, we don’t just report what's happening — we investigate how and why. We follow the threads others leave behind and uncover the forces shaping our future.
Your tax-deductible donation fuels journalism that asks harder questions and digs where others won’t.
Don’t settle for surface-level coverage.
Unearth what matters. Help dig deeper.
Donate now.
The wealth gap of this beyond-gilded age is sure to shape a truly messy world ahead.
As writer Ben Judah argues, the Occupy movement, Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders changed this generation's thinking, and made a come-from-behind win like that of New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez possible.
We have become a Potemkin society where tokens are put on the stage to represent equality while the vast majority of Americans are economically enslaved.
Knowledge, organized and available to all motivated voters, can win out. Then we can get our country back.
The voting booth is a bust for the kinds of change most Americans want. We must create grass-roots movements that shake the nation to its foundations.
As American activist Joel Kovel wrote six years ago, "The future will be eco-socialist, because without eco-socialism there will be no future."
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.