Want proof that Obama is trying to act like a petty tyrant and dictator along the lines of Kim Jung (Mentally) Il, Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad, etc.?
Read this piece about he’s refusing to accept TARP money from banks in order to maintain control over them.
The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell ‘em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.
It is not for nothing that rage has been turned on those wicked financiers. The banks are at the core of the administration’s thrust: By managing the money, government can steer the whole economy even more firmly down the left fork in the road.
If the banks are forced to keep TARP cash — which was often forced on them in the first place — the Obama team can work its will on the financial system to unprecedented degree. That’s what’s happening right now.
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.
Think about it: If Rick Wagoner can be fired and compact cars can be mandated, why can’t a bank with a vault full of TARP money be told where to lend? And since politics drives this administration, why can’t special loans and terms be offered to favored constituents, favored industries, or even favored regions? Our prosperity has never been based on the political allocation of credit — until now.
In case you haven’t quite yet picked up on it, this is VERY troubling.
Let’s put it in perspective: what if you borrowed money from a bank and when you went to pay it off they told you it was not possible because they wanted to get more interest from you. You’d probably grab the bank manager by the throat and throttle him to within an inch of his life.
Exchange “interest” for “control” and the scenario is the same.
I suspect the time for revolution is fast approaching.
Just in case you forgot how some banks got this mess, check out this article:
Using tools provided by the federal Community Reinvestment Act, community organizers led by a self-described “banking terrorist” applied bullying tactics to secure high-risk mortgages and to shake down lending institutions for billions of dollars – actions that likely contributed to the “mortgage meltdown” that triggered the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
That’s the substance of a new report by the Capital Research Center on the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America headed by Bruce Marks.
“Time and again, NACA has combined the street tactics of protest and demonstration with public policy tools such as the Community Reinvestment Act to pressure banks into expanding their operations in poor neighborhoods,” says the report authored by David Hogberg. “NACA typically extracts self-serving concessions from banks, forcing them to provide it with funds that it then uses to make mortgage loans to low-income borrowers. NACA rolls the fees it earns servicing these loans back into its campaign of bullying banks.”
In 2007, the year before the crash, NACA obtained $10 billion in bank commitments for its own loan commitments with what the group admits were aggressive, hounding intimidation tactics.
“NACA has been accused of being overly aggressive and personal,” explains the group’s website. “NACA wears this as a badge of honor, leaving no stone unturned and often hounding CEOs from their shareholder meetings to their homes. The rationale is simple: lenders have a personal and often devastating impact on the lives of the people who they refuse to provide affordable credit to or take advantage of through predatory loans and scams.”
NACA earned that reputation by first targeting Fleet Financial Group of New England, which was accused of lending money to private mortgage companies that, in turn, lent money at “loan shark rates.” NACA filed lawsuits against Fleet and worked with local media on disparaging news coverage. NACA’s “shock troops,” known for wearing yellow shirts, disrupted speeches by bank officials, including one by CEO Terrence Murray at the Harvard Business School.
Much more at the link.
