Mr. Barofsky should read “Overhaul,” the new book by auto task force member Steven Rattner. In Mr. Rattner’s account, GM did suggest, quite reasonably, that the UAW accept a pension freeze and switch from defined benefits to an IRA-like plan. UAW officials refused even to discuss it — and the auto task force went along with the union, because, as Mr. Rattner describes it, “attacking the union’s sacred cow . . . could jeopardize the process.”

“Trying to break the UAW and crushing [GM and Chrysler’s] creditors,” he writes, were “steps that we believed unimaginable for the Obama administration.” Was this politics or crisis management? Mr. Rattner says the latter. It will be interesting to see whether Mr. Barofsky’s review of the evidence leads to a different conclusion.