Watchdog says bailout failed Main Street

NBC's Lisa Myers reports on a new book by Neil Barofsky, the watchdog who oversaw the controversial $700 billion bank bailout known as TARP. He claims TARP was much more about taking care of Wall Street, than helping Main Street.

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By NBC News staff

Neil Barofsky was hired by Congress and President George W. Bush to serve as a watchdog over the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Nearly four years later, he?s out with a tell-all book that accuses Washington of using the financial industry rescue package to serve the interests of Wall Street instead of focusing on helping regular Americans.

Barofsky sat down with NBC?s Lisa Myers to discuss the book, ?Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street.?

Barofsky tells Myers he hopes the book gets the public mad.

?I want them to understand that we have a real problem in this country in regulatory capture. ?And we have a real problem with the influence of the banks on Washington. And that we are headed towards another financial crisis unless we do something to deal with it,? he said.

Barofsky went on to say that although the TARP program helped prevent financial Armageddon, it failed in other ways.

?Treasury promised when that bill was passed that it was going to do more than just throw hundreds of billions of dollars at banks, fill in some holes and preserve the broken status quo," he said. "It was going to restore the economy.? It was gonna restore lending.? It was gonna preserve homeownership.? And all of those goals, all those promises, were abandoned through really poor policy decisions.? So, in those aspects it's a failure."

Neil Barofsky, the inspector general in charge of the massive bank bailout is out with a controversial new book, in which he claims the bailout was about helping the banks' bottom line, and not about helping Americans struggling with foreclosures.

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Source: http://economywatch.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/07/25/12954095-tarp-watchdog-says-washington-favors-wall-street-over-main-street?lite

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