One role I had was in marketing for a major wireless provider. My job was to identify trends and come up with pricing and promotion ideas to increase sales. There were times were I would trial a concept, see a couple of preliminary successes and make a recommendation to roll the program out market wide. On more than one occasion as I tried to explain the trend I believed was forming, I would hear from our General Manager something along the lines of “2 points does not a trend make.”
Reports out that TCF bank has decided that the restrictions that come with TARP are more impairing than the loans are beneficial. Thus, they are looking to pay back their $361.2 million to the Treasury.
And with that, here are the lessons to be learned:
Government programs, no matter how well intentioned, never, ever, ever, ever help businesses run more efficiently. Don’t believe me? Ask anyone who has ever had an SBA loan.
and
Government programs, no matter how well thought through, will always, always, always have unintended consequences that for some period of time, will disrupt and distort the very function they were created to aid. Again, don’t believe me? Just ask anyone who receives farm supports.
I know that 2 points don’t make a trend but I’m guessing that three certainly does the trick!
Was your GM Yoda?
Seriously, I’d say that three is the beginnings of a trend. Why am I reminded of the 1944 Hartford Ringling Brothers fire?
Now that you mention it, he was shorter with stringy hair.
Government (and it’s elected body) represents a support system for capitalism, right!?! I find a very scary kind of irony in the fact that TCF now needs to receive government approval to get out from under the thumb of TARP. Shouldn’t they merely be able to buy back their stock, and it’s done? I can’t blame the CEO of TCF for thinking that they are getting a raw deal. The government is holding TARP over their head in a way that actually makes TCF less competitive. The correlation to the ominous message of Atlas Shrugged is striking.
It’s for the “public good!”