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Tarp Watchdog: Bailout Failed Main St.

Says all the benefits went to big banks.

Neil M. Barofsky was the special inspector general for TARP, so pay attention: He writes in Wednesday’s New York Times that the bailout package only benefited big banks, which are now 20 percent larger than they were before the crisis. He writes, “Treasury’s mismanagement of TARP and its disregard for TARP’s Main Street goals—whether born of incompetence, timidity in the face of a crisis or a mindset too closely aligned with the banks it was supposed to rein in—may have so damaged the credibility of the government as a whole that future policy makers may be politically unable to take the necessary steps to save the system the next time a crisis arises.”