meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger

An Inside Account of the Financial Crisis

Jill on Money with Jill Schlesinger

Audacy

Education, Investing, Business, Self-improvement

4.6 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2018

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is our third and final installment of shows looking back on the financial crisis of ten years ago. It was such a big moment we felt we needed to devote most of September to remembering how the U.S. financial system was brought to its knees. Today we get the inside account from Neil Barofsky, the former Inspector General of TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) and author of Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street. As you’ll hear, the discussion is basically a play-by-play of how the Treasury Department bungled the financial bailouts. At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, Barofsky gave up his job as a prosecutor in the esteemed U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York City, where he had convicted drug kingpins, Wall Street executives, and perpetrators of mortgage fraud, to become the inspector general in charge of overseeing administration of the bailout money. It’s fascinating to hear him talk about how from the onset, his efforts to protect against fraud and to hold big banks accountable for how they spent taxpayer money were met with outright hostility from Treasury officials in charge of the bailouts. Barofsky offers an insider’s perspective on the mishandling of the $700 billion TARP bailout fund. There’s no holding back as he reveals the extreme lengths to which our government officials were willing to go in order to serve the interests of Wall Street firms at the expense of the broader public, and at the expense of effective financial reform. Just like the book, this interview delivered an incredible account of Barofsky’s plunge into the political hot-seat of Washington, as well as a vital revelation of just how captured by Wall Street our political system is and why the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger and more dangerous in the wake of the crisis. If you have a money question, just email me! “Better Off” is sponsored by Betterment. "Better Off" theme music is by Joel Goodman, www.joelgoodman.com. Connect with me at these places for all my content: http://www.jillonmoney.com/  https://twitter.com/jillonmoney  https://www.facebook.com/JillonMoney  https://www.instagram.com/jillonmoney/  https://www.youtube.com/c/JillSchlesinger  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillonmoney/  http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/jill-on-money  https://apple.co/2pmVi50

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hi, it's Jill Schlesinger, host of the Better Off Podcast. Today we are talking about TARP. What happened with that plan to rescue the big banks? Was it fairly implemented? We have a guest who has

0:14.6

inside information about what went down with TARP. If any company runs out of

0:19.7

capital, runs out of equity, then their liabilities are more than their assets and they go bankrupt.

0:26.0

And that was the fear that was really gripping Washington and the world was that these banks

0:30.3

simply were under-capitalized.

0:31.7

They had borrowed too much money, they had taken

0:33.7

too much losses in these wild bets that they made on mortgages and housing.

0:37.7

Welcome to the Better Off Podcast. We're sponsored by Betterment, the largest independent online financial advisor.

0:46.4

This is the final interview that we are airing in honor of the 10-year anniversary of the financial crisis.

0:54.6

We had Gretchen Morganson from the Wall Street Journal,

0:57.6

previously of the New York Times.

0:59.2

We had Adam Two's, whose book crashed,

1:01.9

is just an incredible analysis of the whole financial crisis.

1:06.6

He's a historian at Columbia University, so it's a very big picture view, and let's be honest, you're not reading a 600 page book I did it for you so

1:15.1

listen to that today we've got a really interesting guest his name is Neil

1:20.4

Barofsky his book way back when which is already about five years old is rescuing Wall Street. And the reason why Neil Barofsky is the perfect person to

1:37.2

interview about this is because he was the guy who was hired to oversee the Troubled Asset Plan, the TARP.

1:48.1

And oddly enough, this Saturday, the 29th of September, is the anniversary of when the House of Representatives

1:57.4

rejected the legislation submitted by the Treasury Department, requesting authority to purchase troubled

2:04.4

assets from financial institutions.

2:06.7

Obviously we know that just days later Congress passed and President Bush

2:12.0

signed into law the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Audacy, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Audacy and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.