What the Postal Service can't deliver (Fortune, 1973)

Editor's note: Each week we publish a great story from Fortune's archives. Earlier this week, the struggling U.S. Postal Service defaulted on a $5.5 billion payment it owed the Treasury Department to pre-fund the health care benefits for its retirees. Was this its destiny? In July 1973, Fortune wrote that the Postal Service "cannot operate as a self-sustaining business without continually raising rates or sacrificing service."

By Irwin Ross

FORTUNE -- MORE

Mr. Barofsky goes to Washington

The man who policed the great Wall Street bank bailout tells his story. A review of Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, by Neil Barofsky.

By Stephen Gandel, senior editor

FORTUNE -- While he probably won't admit it, my guess is that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admires former TARP inspector general Neil Barofsky. And we should too.

In one memorable scene in Barofsky's new MORE