The comments timed out back at Sister Toldjah, so I’m bringing the entire post here and moving it to the top. The placeholder I had up since April 6 is below the fold.
(H/T – Lawhawk)
Back at my regular home, both my co-blogger Shoebox and I have been monitoring attempts, some successful, others not, by banks to get out from under the Troubled Assets Relief Program. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Stuart Varney relates the story of a larger bank that was forced to take TARP money:
Here’s a true story first reported by my Fox News colleague Andrew Napolitano (with the names and some details obscured to prevent retaliation). Under the Bush team a prominent and profitable bank, under threat of a damaging public audit, was forced to accept less than $1 billion of TARP money. The government insisted on buying a new class of preferred stock which gave it a tiny, minority position. The money flowed to the bank. Arguably, back then, the Bush administration was acting for purely economic reasons. It wanted to recapitalize the banks to halt a financial panic.
Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He’s been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with “adverse” consequences if its chairman persists. That’s politics talking, not economics.
Why can’t this bank do what some tiny banks that received TARP money have done? Varney answer that with three words – “Control. Direct. Command.” He points to the Pay for Performance Act, which many have seen as merely a ceiling on pay at any company that has so much as a dime of TARP money. Given the Democrats’ support for a “living wage”, I see that as a vehicle for raising the minimum wage by means other than legislation. After all, if the biggest banks are forced to pay a large sum of money for entry-level tellers, that will force the smaller banks and other businesses that offer entry-level jobs to follow suit.
This is another instance where I’m going to make you go to Sister Toldjah, at least initially, for the full story, including a look at the flip side of the Pay for Performance Act. I do, however, want to make sure you read Stuart Varney’s story in today’s Wall Street Journal that relates the story of a bank that was first forced to take TARP money then remain in TARP despite attempts to pay back the “loan”.
Related to that, Anthony, one of the other guys guest-blogging at ST, took a rather critical look at a New York Times columnist’s love of Nazi Germany for their “successful” stimulus plan.
It remains true that revealing the TARP-dependent banks will be problematic.
After all, Citibank IS a Zombie and should simply be sold off in pieces; perhaps the same is true of M&I and Bank of America.
Re: Arguably, back then, the Bush administration was acting for purely economic reasons.
Where the heck did that stupid assumption come from?
There is no evidence Bush was acting from any economic-based motive.
TARP is and always has been about power. Money is at bes the tool.
Even the 3-page Bush/Paulson plan made this clear. The Government decides which assets it wants to “buy”. The Government sets the “price” and the “terms”. And there is nothing the company recieving this “help” can do about it.
The Obama use of the power usurped by Bush are the same as when Bush wanted to use them. the target of the largesse might change slightly. But since Goldman Sachs Boyz run the treasury, even that is unlikley.
Stuart Varney clearly believes: “It’s not Fascism when our side does it.”