by Alan Cordova

The bailout has plunged the federal government into relatively uncharted legal territory and, as a result, it has had to look outside its ranks for help. In particular, the Treasury Department has retained legal and accounting advisers to draw up contracts and monitor the disbursement of funds.

 

I posted a table of the contracts signed by Hank Paulson. According to reports, this is but the tip of the contracting iceberg.

Beyond the current Treasury solicitations, there will be a lot of work for the cleaning-up-the-mess business: an army of lobbyists, banking consultants and investors has come out of the woodwork to offer both public- and private-sector clients their specialized services. So far, it seems as though they are well positioned: as one report notes, the trend is "strategic hiring in, volume hiring out."