Posted by
Bill Crawford on Sunday, April 05, 2009 9:29:50 PM
So it seems that when Henry Paulson dredged up all the top bankers in the country and told them that the Treasury Department was going to become their partners, some of them balked. They were told summarily that they didn't have a choice. They were threatened with all sorts of audit things.
The reasoning behind this was that Treasury didn't want the public to know which ones of them were really in serious trouble last September, and this may have had more than a little sense behind it- then.
Even though the banks haven't been really open about showing their use of the bailout money, the market has a transparency of it's own. It doesn't take much effort to pick them now. All you have to do is follow the trail of pieces being sold off, or follow the share values. There is a reason why it won't be long before it costs more in broker commissions to buy stock in CitiGroup than it does to actually buy the stock.
Here's the real horror story now: the banks that didn't want to take the money don't want to have their boards chosen by Rahm Emmanuel, and they are asking to give it back.
AND THE WHITE HOUSE REFUSES TO LET THEM. Are we clear on that? Time has passed, and everybody knows which banks are the nut cases. Obama WANTS to be partners. He wants to direct traffic.
How nuts is this? The government created this crisis by herking and jerking banks to lend mortgage money to people who never should have gotten any, and now the government wants to take over the industry so they can save us- from themselves, I guess.
I don't know what kind of medication you have to mix before that makes any sense. I really don't. Can anybody out there show me what I am missing out on?