Road to Recovery

Special inspector general Neil Barofsky was interviewed by The Huffington Post Investigation Funds Christine Spolar and was both blunt and terrifying.  Barofsky, who has been charged with tracking the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) financial bialout, made some staggering claims.  

According to Barofsky, one of the primary purposes of the bailout is being completely ignored by the financial institutes that have received billions of dollars.  Increasing lending for average Americans was one of the pivitol arguments that sold Tarp to the American people.  So if the lending institutions aren’t using the money to increase lending to consumers in order to stimulate the economy, what are they doing with the money? According to Barofsky “acquiring assets, paying off their debts, and sitting on the capital.”  So the money that was supposed to trickle down to hard working Americans is sitting in accounts earning interest for these companies.  

If that isn’t enough to raise the blood pressure of every red-blooded American, the financial sector’s greed has failed to make our financial system more secure.  In fact as Barofsky puts it “I think we may be in a far more dangerous place today than we were a year ago.”