Obama Wants to Control the Banks

Obama Wants to Control the Banks

online.wsj.com

ere'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.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Now this is an opinion piece from the WSJ, but it contains some very important reporting, as well, concerning the use of the TARP program to grab control of the financial system. If the class warfare of bills like the Pay for Performance Act aren't enough to make you draw the line, certainly this sort of criminal activity, with the use of YOUR taxpayer dollars, is enough? I don't care what side of the aisle you are on, when our government is taking over sectors of our economy for the sake of power, it is time to say enough is enough. This cannot go on for 4 years, or there will be no USA left to stand up for.

online.wsj.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

White House team discloses TARP firm ties
By: Kenneth P. Vogel
April 3, 2009 10:49 PM EST

Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, pulled in more than $2.7 million in speaking fees paid by firms at the heart of the financial crisis, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America Corp. and the now-defunct Lehman Brothers.
He pulled in another $5.2 million from D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund for which he served as managing director from October 2006 until joining the administration.
Look who is involved with Tarp

Thomas E. Donilon, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, was paid $3.9 million by the power law firm O’Melveny & Myers to represent clients including two firms that receieved federal bailout funds: Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. He also disclosed that he’s a member of the Trilateral Commission and sits on the steering committee of the supersecret Bilderberg group. Both groups are favorite targets of conspiracy theorists.

And White House Counsel Greg Craig earned $1.7 million in private practice representing an exiled Bolivian president, a Panamanian lawmaker wanted by the U.S. government for allegedly murdering a U.S. soldier and a tech billionaire accused of securities fraud and various sensational drug and sex crimes.

Sometimes I think it is very curious what does and doesn't take hold here on ATS. What is contained in this story is one of the biggest red flags Ive seen; however, since there is no real room to argue left and right or speculate...no one touches it. Makes one wonder how many people on here are just here to vent some vitriol rather than contribute to the welfare of the US as they love to yell about.

I've talked to several smaller banks that were forced to take the TARP money, and now they are saying that the government wont let them pay it back.

Why? Small Bank is forced to take TARP money, gets bought out by Big Bank, money becomes a wash. Big Bank gets billions of dollars it doesn't have to pay back or uses that money to pay back the government.

In the end, we'll have a very few select banks - much like it was when things started out back in the early 1900's - and these banks will be sitting on a nice big stack (trillions?) of taxpayers money that they wont ever have to pay back.

Pretty interesting scheme, and the big banks are getting away with it...right in front of our faces.