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Former TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky sat down with The Daily Show's Jon Stewart to talk about his book Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street and the reasons for the program's failure.

You can read more about that in Matt Taibbi's latest at Rolling Stone: 'Bailout': Neil Barofsky's Adventures in Groupthink City:

Bailout has its first paperback release this week, and Barofsky accordingly is making the media rounds (check out Comedy Central tomorrow), where he'll mainly be asked about the political revelations in the book. You know, the inside-baseball stories of how the officials who administered the TARP bailout fought transparency at every turn, failed to do due diligence on the health and viability of bailout recipients, seemed totally uninterested in creating safeguards against fraud, and generally speaking spent more time bitching about the media and plotting against the likes of Elizabeth Warren and, eventually, Barofsky himself than making sure the largest federal rescue in history wasn't a complete waste of money.

As the former Special Inspector General of the TARP, a key official who was present at the highest levels throughout most of the bailout period and saw from the inside how both the Bush and Obama administrations attacked the economic collapse, Barofsky does have that story to tell, and the book unsurprisingly is full of historically weighty scenes and factoids that will be culled by reporters like me for years to come.

But there's a secondary and I think more interesting subplot to this book, a personal story that will give it more staying power. Just like Will was really a journey-of-self-discovery story that just happened to have the Watergate burglary as a backdrop (the book's real climax comes in the post-Watergate prison years, where Liddy really "finds himself"), Bailout is a kind of Alice in Wonderland tale of an ordinary, sane person disappearing down into a realm of hallucinatory dysfunction, with Tim Geithner playing the role of the Mad Hatter and Barofsky the increasingly frustrated Alice who realizes he's stuck at the stupidest tea party he ever was at. [...]

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We've covered both of these stories here, whether it's the "too big to jail" corrupt HSBC, or the out of touch greedy AIG, which was considering suing the taxpayers after they'd bailed them out. This Wednesday evening, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took his turn going after them.

AIG decided not to join their former CEO "Hank" Greenberg's lawsuit against the government after all. I guess they took a look at those booming sales of pitchforks and torches and decided it might not bode well for them to do so.

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We've seen the Obama campaign going after Mitt Romney for his time at Bain Capital. I think with the Olympics approaching we're about to hear more about this story from them very soon. From Up With Chris Hayes: Mitt Romney and federal money for the Olympics:

Up host Chris Hayes and his guests talk to former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson about the federal assistance Mitt Romney sought as head of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

I clipped the interview down to the portions with Anderson. You can watch the entire segment at the link above. Here's more from the Daily KOS on Romney's time running the Olympic games: Romney's Olympics:

Much has been made recently about Mitt Romney's involvement with Bain while he was heading the Salt Lake Olympics Organizing Committee, but what about his actual involvement with the Olympics themselves? Romney has made his "turnaround" of the Olympics that had been tainted by an international bribery scandal a point of his campaign. He regards it as proof of his amazing leadership ability and patriotism. So, how did Romney bail out the Olympics. Well, he didn't. We did.

A September 2000 report from the United States General Accounting Office tells us that tax payers paid nearly $1.3 billion for the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. The majority of that, 80% of that, in fact, $1 billion of that, was spent not on the game themselves, but on infrastructure upgrades. With 51% going to improving highways and 28% to improve mass transit. [...]

To put that into perspective, we, the taxpayers, spent roughly $75 million on the Los Angeles Olympics and $609 million on the Atlanta Olympics.

This prompted Senator John McCain to call the Salt Lake game a "pork-barrel" project.

“I think it is a disgrace,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who, along with U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., asked the government agency to investigate the escalating expenditures for hosting the Olympic games in American cities.“But this is a logical extension of what you get when you start pork-barrel spending.”

So, here is the question. Did any of that $1.3 billion of taxpayer's money go to benefit Romney or Bain? Read on...

As they noted, there are more questions which might be answered by Mitt Romney releasing his tax returns, which it seems more obvious day by day that he is never going to release. Romney seems to love that government "free stuff" when it benefits himself and his business buddies, but not so much for the working class and the poor.

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Jason Linkins in his weekly Sunday Talking Heads live blog, did a nice job of summing this portion of Ed Gillespie's appearance on Fox News Sunday up, where Gillespie was trying to explain Mitt Romney's opinion on the bailout of the auto industry:

Wallace moves to Romney's opposition to the auto industry rescue. Again, Wallace has done his homework, pointing out that the current Republican governor of Michigan supported the rescue and has pointed out that Romney's weird explanation for how it came to be that he simultaneously opposed and supported this rescue does not make sense -- Rommey says he wanted a "managed bankruptcy" and has insisted from time to time that what Obama did was not a managed bankruptcy, only to say on alternate weeks that it was a "managed bankruptcy" and that Romney will "take a lot of credit for it."

There's only one salient difference between Romney and Obama's position -- Romney seems to think that private money should have been used and was available to manage the bankruptcy. The White House position was that private money would have OBVIOUSLY been preferable, but there was, as you could imagine, nobody who was particularly hot to pony up the scratch. So the federal government did, after the executives successfully jumped through a bunch of hoops. If we're being honest here, Romney played his hand back when it was still uncertain that the auto rescue would work, his gamble didn't pay off, and now he's having to spit a bunch of circuitous garbage about it to keep from simply admitting he was wrong.

It seems to me that he'd actually be better off if he just conceded the Detroit bailout to Obama, like Michigan's governor has, and just move to another point of critique. But in for a penny, I guess?

Gillespie doesn't have much of an answer, except to say that there was a debate and many people had different point of view. Gillespie says that a managed bankruptcy was Romney's idea. Wallace says, sure, but not with public money. Gillespie says that it's still a managed bankruptcy. Wallace counters, saying that doing it Romney's way would have actually led to a Chapter 7 liquidation. And around and around. "I understand that is an opinion," Gillespie says. He says that Romney's "belief" is that a private bailout would have been better. He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.

Gillespie eventually gets around to being slightly more honest -- Romney believes that the bondholders who made terrible investments in these companies should have been bailed out ahead of the middle class people who built the cars. That's really the only worthwhile thing to remember from this discussion.

Transcript via Fox below the fold.

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Apparently the moderators at the Fox South Carolina Republican presidential debate didn't think it was worth calling Mitt Romney out, or didn't do their homework, heaven forbid when they let him repeat his hypocrisy on whether the TARP bailouts were a "slush fund." Color me not shocked that the crack team of "reporters" over at Fox didn't catch this one.

From Think Progress from last June -- After Calling TARP A ‘Slush Fund,’ Romney Campaigns At Bank That Took TARP Funds:

At different times, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has both supported and derided the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), better known as the bank bailouts of 2008. Most recently, Romney called it a “slush fund” that “should be shut down.”

Today, however, Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign stopped at Lincoln Financial Group in Concord, New Hampshire, where hundreds of the company’s employees turned out to hear Romney talk about jobs and the economy. Lincoln Financial Group and its parent company, Lincoln National Corporation, took $950 million in TARP funds in 2008.

That’s not the worst of it, though. Originally, Lincoln Financial was eligible for much less in TARP funding because it did not qualify for money marked for thrift savings companies. To become eligible, it bought a small thrift savings company that, on its own, would have received only $350,000 in TARP funding. Because of how TARP funding was calculated, however, Lincoln Financial was eligible for the $950 million it received solely because it added the small thrift savings company. In 2010, the Special Inspector of TARP issued an oversight report about the program in which he detailed the way Lincoln Financial gamed the system to receive more funding: [...]

In 2009, Romney told the crowd at the Values Voters Summit that, when the government starts “bailing out banks…we have we have every good reason to be alarmed and to speak our mind.” That apparently wasn’t the case today. According to reports from the event, Romney never mentioned the bailouts even while standing inside of a company that benefited directly from them.

Apparently Romney still has no shame or remorse for the same level of hypocrisy, since he continued to tout those same lines during this week's debate.

Transcript below the fold.

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Because nothing says "uniter" like running a vulture fund like Bain Capital. Mitt Romney was asked if he might be vulnerable to being painted as the Gordon Gekko character from the movie Wall Street who famously uttered the words "greed is good" during that movie and Romney's response was to go after President Obama as a "great divider" who wants to just attack anyone who's been successful in life.

That's pretty rich coming from a member of the party that's used wedge issues and dividing the working class on matters like religion and abortion to get the electorate to vote against their own economic interests. It's also rather bizarre given the fact that President Obama, to a fault if you ask most progressives, has attempted to bend over backwards to accommodate and work with Republicans, only to find those attempts met with the back of a hand, or continued and unprecedented obstruction by Republicans in the Senate, not to mention having to deal with the Blue Dog conserva-Dems within his own caucus to try to get anything done.

Romney also attacked President Obama for his "one experience overseeing an enterprise", that being the structured bailout of GM, and tried to compare that to what he did during his time at Bain Capital and the fact that factories had to be closed and jobs were lost. Excuse me, but I don't recall President Obama enriching himself personally from the decisions that were made in order to keep the American auto industry from going under. One can argue about the details of the bailout and what conditions should have been put on the auto companies and whether there should have been more done to protect jobs in America, but making the decision as president to keep that industry alive to what Romney did at Bain is utterly ridiculous.

And if Mitt Romney had his way, as Jon Perr noted in his post You Know Mitt Romney Is Out of Touch When... Romney authored an op-ed titled Let Detroit Go Bankrupt -- That was his solution to the crisis with keeping GM and all of the other businesses that would have been affected by their bankruptcy, including the other auto makers and the harm that would have done to our already teetering economy, at that time.

And of course we all know why Republicans like Romney really hated that GM bailout. Because it didn't end up busting the United Auto Workers Union, and god knows we can't have anyone protecting those dirty f-ing hippie evil union members over the interests of Wall Street.

Transcript via Fox below the fold.

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What a guy... John Boehner, man of the little people. I guess Republicans only like bailouts when they're for multi-billion dollar foreign oil companies. After realizing he stepped in it, it John Boehner is now walking back his comment that the taxpayers should help bailout BP.

Boehner: Government--i.e. Taxpayers--Should Help Pay For Oil Spill:

Congressional Democrats and the White House are toying with different ways to force BP to cover the costs of damages from the Gulf oil spill. But they face stiff opposition from industry...and it seems leading Republicans. In response to a question from TPMDC, House Minority Leader John Boehner said he believes taxpayers should help pick up the tab for the clean up.

"I think the people responsible in the oil spill--BP and the federal government--should take full responsibility for what's happening there," Boehner said at his weekly press conference this morning.

Boehner's statement followed comments last Friday by US Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue who said he opposes efforts to stick BP, a member of the Chamber, with the bill. "It is generally not the practice of this country to change the laws after the game," he said. "Everybody is going to contribute to this clean up. We are all going to have to do it. We are going to have to get the money from the government and from the companies and we will figure out a way to do that."

And then the backtrack. Boehner spox: No taxpayer money on Gulf spill cleanup or damages:

House GOP leader John Boehner does not believe any taxpayer money should be spent on the cleanup of the Gulf spill or on any damages caused by it, his spokesman confirms to me.

"No taxpayer money for cleanup or damages -- period. BP pays," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel emails.

...Boehner's office subsequently clarified, saying he'd misheard the question. His aides pointed to this previous Boehner quote: "Not a dime of taxpayer money should be used to clean up their mess." And Boehner has also said we must "hold BP accountable for the clean up costs."

Those quotes are pretty clear. But the problem is that the Chamber's position is that while BP is on the hook for the cleanup, its liability for damages should be limited, meaning inevitably that taxpayers should bear some of that liability.

...Perhaps, but the distinction between cleanup and damages is clearly important to the Chamber and to BP. Boehner's office, however, insists that his position on this has been clear throughout.

Either way, asked for more clarification, Boehner spokesman Steel says that when Boehner said no taxpayer money should be spent on the cleanup, that does also include damages.

"No taxpayer money for cleanup or damages -- period," Steel emailed. "BP pays. If the current law doesn't guarantee that, we are happy to work in a bipartisan way on reasonable new legislation."

Who wants to take a bet Boehner and the Republicans still won't vote for lifting the cap on damages? Olbermann reports BP is also desperate to protect their stock prices. As he noted it's too bad they're not attacking stopping the oil destroying the Gulf with the same amount of concern.

BP offers dividend olive branch to U.S.:

BP is seeking a deal with the White House under which it would sacrifice its dividend in return for a calming of the political hysteria over the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

Chief executive Tony Hayward will proffer the olive branch in meetings over the coming days in the hope of quelling the increasingly vicious invective in Washington.

Options include scrapping the payout for one quarter or until the Macondo well is capped; putting the payment in 'escrow' - i.e. deferring it - until BP's liabilities are clearer; or paying it in shares rather than cash. Read on...

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(h/t David)

Paul Krugman repeated his criticisms of Republicans he made last week and hit Mitch McConnell for his lie that resolution authority is setting the banks up for future bailouts.

Krugman: Anyone who says we need to be bipartisan should bear in mind that for the last several weeks Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader had been trying to stop reform with possibly the most dishonest argument ever made in the history of politics, which is the claim that having regulation of the banks actually bailing out the banks and that basically the argument boiled down to saying what we really need to do to deal with fires is abolish the fire department, because then people will know that they can't let their buildings burn in the first place, right. It's an incredible... so anyone who says bipartisan doesn't include the Senate Minority Leader.

Here's more from Krugman's column on the topic The Fire Next Time:

On Tuesday, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, called for the abolition of municipal fire departments.

Firefighters, he declared, “won’t solve the problems that led to recent fires. They will make them worse.” The existence of fire departments, he went on, “not only allows for taxpayer-funded bailouts of burning buildings; it institutionalizes them.” He concluded, “The way to solve this problem is to let the people who make the mistakes that lead to fires pay for them. We won’t solve this problem until the biggest buildings are allowed to burn.”

O.K., I fibbed a bit. Mr. McConnell said almost everything I attributed to him, but he was talking about financial reform, not fire reform. In particular, he was objecting not to the existence of fire departments, but to legislation that would give the government the power to seize and restructure failing financial institutions.

But it amounts to the same thing.

Now, Mr. McConnell surely isn’t sincere; while pretending to oppose bank bailouts, he’s actually doing the bankers’ bidding. But before I get to that, let’s talk about why he’s wrong on substance. Read on...

From The Daily Show March 16, 2010:

Chris Dodd introduces financial reform legislation, and Jon pretends he has the same rights as a corporation.

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After playing an ad from John McCain which features remarks by J.D. Hayworth during his radio program questioning whether President Obama’s birth certificate is legitimate or not, Bill O’Reilly asks Hayworth if he’s a “birther guy”. Here’s his response.

Hayworth: Bill, no, I’m a broadcaster and those comments were taken from a radio program where I was a catalyst for conversation. Just imagine Bill if every topic you brought up on The Factor, bloggers said you were an instant advocate for whom ever was on.

O’Reilly: Well they do already. That’s what Media Matters does.

Hayworth: Well okay. Then we’ve got something in common.

O’Reilly: If I mention the word black, I’m anti-black. If I mention the word gay, I’m a homophobe. You know what it is. Okay, so I want you to tell the American public how you view the birther movement. Is it legitimate? Do you believe that it—he might not be the President (crosstalk).

Hayworth: I view… hey Bill I view this entire debate as esoteric. It’s as esoteric as arguing about the eligibility of Chester Alan Arthur well over a century after he served as president. Look, Barack Obama’s the forty fourth president of the United States. His election was certified. I believe he was born in Hawaii. I made certain statements on the air to provoke conversation. That’s what happens in broadcasting.

Sadly Sen. McCain is involved in the politics of distortion and distraction. I can understand why he doesn’t want people talking about his bailout vote that included $150 billion in earmarks. He doesn’t want us talking about the fact he voted against the Bush tax cuts that I helped write. And he doesn’t want us talking about his amnesty that would have cost American tax payers $2.6 trillion in retirement benefits alone according to The Heritage Foundation. This is politics based on distortion and distraction and I’m happy to set the record straight.

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