Taxpayer funds continue to flow
Then there was the Omnibus spending bill. This bill includes another $14 billion in earmarks. Government spending gone ballistic. The bailout takes on yet another face, but in the end, it’s all your money.
The Omnibus spending bill is a whopping $410 billion. It contains nearly 8,000 earmarks.
I am considering creating an auto-complete function on this blog; whenever a ‘b’ or ‘t’ is entered, the word ‘billion’ or the word ‘trillion’ is automatically spelled out. The Congress and the president apparently equate these numbers with ‘hundred’ or ‘thousand.’ Unfortunately, there is a significant difference between each of these descriptive terms that impacts generations of taxpayers to come.
In the meantime, more consensus has been voiced in recent days that the most important measures to repair the economy have to be refocused on the banking system. This was at the heart of the original bailout.
The focus of bailout funds for banks includes freeing up capital to increase lending and stabilizing banks that have large pools of toxic assets on their books.
Take your TARP funds back- please
Ironically, many of the banks that took early bailout funds (TARP) are anxious to give it back. Many more never took the funds, although they were approved to receive it. This information is not largely known by the public.
Many otherwise healthy banks do not want the stigma attached to the bailout funds. Many of the leading recipients of the bailout have brands and reputations that have been tarnished because of their financial difficulties. Healthier banks don’t want to be grouped in with institutions that find bailout funds a necessity.
An LA Times article describes one example of a bank anxious to overnight a check back to the government. Northern Trust Corp. received negative publicity because it took $1.5 billion in TARP funds and later sponsored an annual golf tournament. The bank stated that it actually made a $795 million profit in 2008 and was not deserving of the negative press. The golf tournament has raised $50 million for charity and the bank feels it has been undeservingly maligned.
