Doling out $700 billion to bail out banks required a lot of manpower, according to the Department of the Treasury, which turned to private accounting and legal firms to help run the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). But there are concerns that some of these firms—which so far have been paid $159 million—may have charged excessively for their services, leading TARP’s special inspector general, Neil Barofsky, to begin investigating how Treasury officials chose the companies and whether the government is being gouged.