Bailout fun: It seems if you know the right folks, it's not too tough to get $$$, without a lot of questions asked. (Next in line: developers?)

Maybe Bailout Czar Neel Kashkari knows where the $$$ went?
(But of course he'll never tell!)

"It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going? But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it. 'We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, "Here's how we're doing it,"' said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. 'We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to.'"

-- AP summary of the result of its effort to get bailed-out banks to reply to a simple four-question survey on what they did with the money

by Ken

Rachel Maddow called attention last night to this AP (attempted) survey of recipients of bailout money. It was pretty enterprising of AP to try to get some information, especially since the Bushbailers don't seem much interested in following up on what became of the $335B or so already distributed, which is looking increasingly lake a Mad Money giveaway to the Wall Streeters' friends, associates, and cronies.

Since the Bushbailers don't seem ever to have arrived at an actual theory of how passing out that money was going to pry open the credit jam that was supposedly locking the economy up, I suppose we can hardly blame the recipients of their largesse for stockpiling their gifts, or using them to buy up other banks at fire-sale prices, or doing any damned thing they please -- not necessarily including lending any of it in a way that might, you know, ease the credit crisis.

As has been widely noted, in contrast to the hard-line, even oppressive (if not actually ruinous) strings that have been attached to loans to the U.S. automakers, with special urging from Senate Republicans who by amazing coincidence come from states with major presences by the U.S. automakers' foreign-based competitors (heavily subsidized by those states, of course.

Should you apply for bailout money?

Rachel also gave us a look at the actual application for TARP cash, which is a cinch to find online in the form of a pdf file. It's a six-page file, but four pages of it is just something called "Application Guidelines for TARP Capital Purchase Program," and I'm betting that only the goody-goody teacher's-pet types will read all that stuff.

The application itself, as you may have heard, is only two pages -- and a good part of that is just filling in names and contact info (all that goes on the first page is the institution name and address and contact info for Primary and Secondary Contacts) and a bit of financial info like how much money you'd like.

Technically, in order to apply for TARP money, you're supposed to be a bank holding company. I don't know how strict they are about this. You are supposed to provide your "RSSD, Holding Company Docket Number and / or FDIC Certificate Number, As Relevant," and it's quite possible that they check. Or then again -- "checking" doesn't seem high on the list of the Bushbailers' priorities . . . especially if you happen to know the right people, or the right kind of people.


AND NEXT UP FOR BAILOUT: THE DEVELOPERS?

From yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

Developers Ask U.S. for Bailout as Massive Debt Looms

With a record amount of commercial real-estate debt coming due, some of the country's biggest property developers have become the latest to go hat-in-hand to the government for assistance.

They're warning policymakers that thousands of office complexes, hotels, shopping centers and other commercial buildings are headed into defaults, foreclosures and bankruptcies. The reason: according to research firm Foresight Analytics LCC, $530 billion of commercial mortgages will be coming due for refinancing in the next three years -- with about $160 billion maturing in the next year. Credit, meanwhile, is practically nonexistent and cash flows from commercial property are siphoning off.

#