Some bankers say the conditions have become so onerous that they want to return the bailout money.
And what are some of these restrictions?
Financial institutions that are getting government bailout funds have been told to put off evictions and modify mortgages for distressed homeowners. They must let shareholders vote on executive pay packages. They must slash dividends, cancel employee training and morale-building exercises, and withdraw job offers to foreign citizens.
Poor babies.
If these guys are giving back the money, then they clearly don't need the money. So the question is why the fuck did they take it in the first place? My guess, and not the answer they would give, is because it was free money with no strings attached and they are greedy bastards that care about their own well being (paycheck and bonuses first) and about the well being of the financial institutions they almost destroyed last.
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Hey Adam... I have enjoyed reading your blog since I found it but thought your last post on the bailout deserved a comment for the sake of clarification:
You write: "If these guys are giving back the money, then they clearly don't need the money. So the question is why the fuck did they take it in the first place?"
Which is a good question. The answer, which appears largley unknown, is that when the government (under then President Bush) proposed giving the TARP money to the 8 banks that received it, they sat everyone in a room and forced them take it. The banks were told that they could not leave the room until they signed all they needed to sign to accept the money. Why did the government force them to take the money when some of them didn't need it? It was reasoned that if word got out which banks took the money and which didn't it would be equivalent of the government announcing which banks were in good shape and which were not. Forcing them all to take the money was done to prevent a run on those banks that actually did need the money.
Now, enter the new administration. Those banks who were forced by the Bush administration to take the money they didn't need are now going back to the government and saying; "Hey, we didn't sign on for this. We didn't want this money in the first place so how fair is it to hold us to the same standards as those other losers that did need it?", which I think is a reasonable question.
I'm not meaning to sound like I'm defending the banks - any of them - but this seemed an important point for you to consider when asking the above question.
~Mikey
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