Buying the Bank

Leaving aside the fact that failing banks have been taking taxpayer bailout money and giving the CEOs huge bonuses, buying up other banks, and purchasing corporate jets, I’ve been hearing on the radio that our esteemed Congress (and Administration) are now considering having the taxpayers buy up the bad assets of the country’s privately-owned and mismanaged banks. What a fantastic idea. I was looking for worse places than Iraq to put my tax dollars.

One bit of discussion about what to do with the failing banking business explained that the taxpayers would own the bad debts and worthless paper while the banks themselves would remain privately owned and be run and managed by the people who are there now – the same ones who mismanaged them into failure. The other option, it would seem, would be that a new taxpayer-owned bank would be set up which would actually buy all the bad debt from the mismanaged banks, allowing them to keep only their profitable loans. Wow, what a deal we’ll be gettin’ either way!

Brad at Sadly, No! has a good post on the matter, but I especially like the following comment:

• jim said,

This idea is ugly & it needs to die.

Somebody needs to ask Obama how in hell he’s going to do any of the smart stuff he put on his agenda if he blows the Treasury on buying a big-ass trainload of diamond-studded fiscal buggy-whips. This “bad bank” crap is like vaccine for political common sense. Just be straight-up, don’t make yourself look dense pretending it serves any real function - & call it an Economic Incompetence Subsidy.

Alternative-energy plan? Toast. Infrastructure reboot? Boned. Job creation? Hooped. Tax cuts for poor & middle-class Americans? Confetti.

Yes, it so happens that I like pie … & I understand that there’s no such thing as an infinite one.

America needs to get the fuck out of Iraq, NOW … best first step toward financial sanity available. Then it’s time to subject the Pentagon to “Operation Hardcore Liposuction” aka “Black Budget, My Ass”.Tax churches next - sorry, godboys, free-ride-time is over … let’s see how well your vaunted faith stands up to a REAL test. Hack the eternal refuge of cretins that is American business law, so we’re not all paying some weak-fuck CFO’s for three-hour “business lunches” in which to hoover canapes & inhale martinis … or involuntarily subsidizing redundant mountains of neurotoxic ads that rape our souls & waste our time & space.

There - nobody had to die for it, & you just got a few cold hard trillion to play with. Don’t spend it all in one place.

And, P.S., Jillian, at Sadly, No!, has finally seen the light:

And if there’s one thing the last twelve years have taught me, it’s that the only purpose hope serves is to provide profit for the hard liquor sector of the economy - because hope exists only to be brutally dashed, leaving one more bitter and miserable than before.

  Sadly, No!