Down With Tyranny Commends A Louisiana Bankster: Meet Daryl Byrd

DWT hasn't had much anything nice to say about banksters lately. We even created the infamous YouTube clip for Mojo Nixon's "I Hate Banks" (see below) and we've been pushing for nationalization and for accountability for banksters engaged in the kinds of sleazy activities that have devastated the economy-- and millions of families in our country and around the world. Banksters shouldn't get away with it. But today we want to hold a bankster up for praise and admiration, not for scorn. Daryl Byrd, CEO of IberiaBank in Lafayette, Louisiana is not just a bankster; he's also a fanatic Republican who has donated thousands of dollars to a smarmy array of GOP hack politicians including crackpots David Diapers Vitter and Charles Boustany. So why are we sending Byrd love this afternoon?

CNN reported this morning that Byrd has decided to return $90 million of TARP funds to the taxpayers (plus $575,000 in accrued dividends). With thieving criminal banksters stealing the TARP funds in the form of bonuses, frivolous spending sprees, lobbying against working families... anything but what it was meant for (unfreezing the credit crunch), it is exuberantly refreshing that at least one bankster has given back the money.

So why did he? Well, under Bush there were no restrictions. It was just free money, so how could any avaricious money-grubbing bankster resist? It's in their DNA. But now that President Obama and Democrats in Congress are asking for accountability for how the money is used, it looks decidedly less attractive. To Republicans-- including Byrd, of course-- accountability means socialism. So keep your freaking money. OK.

Earlier this week several congressmen, including Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., expressed outrage at Chicago-based Northern Trust, a relatively unscathed bank which received $1.6 billion through the TARP program in November, for throwing a lavish party for clients at a golf tournament.

"Absolutely, some banks regret taking TARP. The enormous amount of mistrust the government has created in banks is something we've never seen," Chris Kelly, head of capital markets at law firm Jones Day [and a Ron Paul donor], told CNNMoney.com when discussing Northern Trust earlier this week.

Since TARP was enacted in October, 442 regional institutions in 48 states and Puerto Rico have received nearly $200 billion.

Byrd clearly had buyers remorse and he did the right thing in returning the taxpayers' money. "We believe recent actions, interpretations, and commentary regarding various aspects of the program places our company at an unacceptable competitive disadvantage," he said. Hopefully he'll be the first of many.

After Louisiana Governor "Bobby" Jindal's creepy performance earlier in the week, when he showed the nation what kind of an alternative the Republican Party has in mind for the country instead of Obama, people have been scratching their heads and wondering what the hell us going on down in the Bayou State, with one senator running around paying prostitutes to spank him for soiling his diapers while a congressman tells his constituents he'll break ranks with the GOP to vote for the Stimulus Bill because it would help them and then, the next day, votes against it so that the Republican Party can say "see, we are all-- 100% of us-- obstructionists regardless of the impact on any damn constituents! In fact, it always gets weirder and weirder in Louisiana, where a porn star, Stormy Daniels, has just about pulled even in GOP primary polling against David Diaper Vitter and where yesterday the Times-Picayune reported that "Louisiana's transportation department plans to request federal dollars for a New Orleans to Baton Rouge passenger rail service from the same pot of railroad money in the president's economic stimulus package that Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized as unnecessary pork on national television Tuesday night." Now Jindal wants $110 million for the high-speed rail line, $20 million more than bankster Byrd is returning to the taxpayers. Jindal, who has become a bit of a laughing stock for claiming to be able to do exorcisms and cure cancer with his bare hands, disparagingly called a similar project between Las Vegas and Orange County a "magnetic levitation line" and has threatened to reject federal assistance for unemployed workers. Jindal hasn't commented on the request for funds to build the railroad since he has been busy trying-- unsuccessfully-- to dig himself out of the mess he created by lying on national television about his purported role in a Katrina rescue operation. Short version: the story he told about being with Sheriff Harry Lee in his weird speech was fictitious and now his office is working overtime to try to rescue Jindal's character. They're not getting anywhere.