I have to admit that I was furious when I heard about this. I’m sick of hearing politicians pontificate about financial executives and their use of the TARP money. First they up reserve requirements, and insist that the banks take the TARP money to meet them, then they turn around and hammer them for what is a normal practice for a lot of businesses that are out of the limelight and still making money. Then, as if that weren’t enough, Barney Frank says “well, give the money back then”, when it is a simple money decision to keep the money. The cost of borrowing the money you insist on the bank having is lower from the government, by your design, than to raise it privately. Don’t make requirements, incentivize someone to meet those requirements, and then hammer them in the press for doing EXACTLY what you asked them to do. NTRS was not a bank that needed a bailout.

  Hey Barney, you dumb***, quit trying to drive banks into kamikaze missions to raise money, you are making the problem worse.

[quote=SometimesNowhere] I have to admit that I was furious when I heard about this. I’m sick of hearing politicians pontificate about financial executives and their use of the TARP money. First they up reserve requirements, and insist that the banks take the TARP money to meet them, then they turn around and hammer them for what is a normal practice for a lot of businesses that are out of the limelight and still making money. Then, as if that weren’t enough, Barney Frank says “well, give the money back then”, when it is a simple money decision to keep the money. The cost of borrowing the money you insist on the bank having is lower from the government, by your design, than to raise it privately. Don’t make requirements, incentivize someone to meet those requirements, and then hammer them in the press for doing EXACTLY what you asked them to do. NTRS was not a bank that needed a bailout.

Hey Barney, you dumb***, quit trying to drive banks into kamikaze missions to raise money, you are making the problem worse. [/quote]





Watching politicians making political hay of dragging corporate CEOs to Capitol Hill demanding to know what they did with the money grows wearisome. Why can’t we drag these same politicians to some public forum and demand to know what THEY did with OUR money?



Witness the fact that a news organization had to drag the Treasury to Federal Court to force them to disclose the details of the bailout plan. Why should that be?