OK, OK, No One Likes My Idea Of Shooting The Banksters-- So What DO We Do With Them?

The dirty, rotten banksters

I was happy to hear that Barney Frank plans to haul a pack of banksters before Congress for some ritual humiliation before giving them another $350 billion in taxpayer money. Frank has been a big proponent of giving the money to the crooked banksters but he also is adamant about slapping their wrists every time another billion winds up in someone's pockets. Naughty, naughty, you bad, bad boys.

A committee aide said that the hearing, tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 11, is still being planned and that a full witness list has yet to be compiled. Frank has long promised to bring bank heads before his committee to call on them to explain how the funds have been used.

For Frank and other backers of the bailout, known as TARP, or the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the problem is that its purpose is to prevent a total collapse of the global financial system. Because of the way politics works, it's difficult to get credit for preventing harm rather than doing good.

The problem is that the thieving banksters haven't been lending the money, giving it to themselves as bonuses instead. Oh, and wouldn't you know... it looks like they've been doing something else with some of the money too: sharing it with members of Congress!

Financial firms and other companies receiving billions of dollars in federal bailout money spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for meetings and charitable gifts on behalf of lawmakers.

In the last six months of 2008, as a financial crisis enveloped the country and lawmakers voted on a $700 billion financial rescue package, eight companies that would benefit from that package spent roughly $366,000 on events and charities connected to members of Congress, according to a review of congressional lobbying records.

It's been a pretty bipartisan (post-partisan? pre-partisan?) Cultural of Corruption kind of deal too, with benefits accruing to such congressional luminaries as Barney Frank (D-MA), GOP House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), James Clyburn (D-SC), Geoff Davis (R-KY), John Tanner (D-TN), and both the Congressional Black Caucus and the Republican Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute (CHLI).

The banksters have also used the money to hire lobbyists to get them more taxpayer dollars. Robert Reich:

We now know that many of the financial giants that have been bailed out by taxpayers continue to finance a platoon of Washington lobbyists, who are at this moment trying to influence TARP II and the next attempt to regulate Wall Street. In effect, your money and mine, and that of all other taxpayers, is paying these lobbyists to push Congress in a direction we have every reason to believe is not in our interests but in the continued interests of Wall Street. Citigroup, the recipient of $45 billion of taxpayer money so far, is still fielding “an army” of Washington lobbyists, according to the New York Times. Its lobbyists are working on a host of issues, including the bailout. In the fourth quarter of 2008, when it got its first infusion of bailout money, Citi spent $1.77 million on lobbying fees. During the last three months of 2008, at least seven other firms receiving bailout funds (American Express, Capital One, Goldman Sachs, KeyCorp, Morgan Stanley, PNC and Bank of New York Mellon) lobbied the government about the bailout.

I like the legislation, S.133, that Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) have proposed to keep TARP funds could be used for lobbying. Here's the description on Feinstein's website:

The Feinstein-Snowe legislation would:

• Prohibit firms receiving economic assistance from Treasury or emergency loans from the Federal Reserve from using such funds for lobbying expenditures or political contributions;

• Require that firms receiving assistance provide detailed, publicly available quarterly reports to Treasury outlining how federal funds have been used;

• Establish corporate governance standards to ensure that firms receiving federal assistance do not waste money on unnecessary expenditures; and,

• Create penalties of at least $100,000 per violation for firms that fail to meet the corporate governance standards established in the bill.

Other than Arlen Specter, Snowe hasn't been able to dig up any Republicans to co-sponsor the bill-- big surprise-- but other co-sponsors include Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Russ Feingold (D-WI), John Kerry (D-MA), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Patty Murray (D-WA), and Bill Nelson (D-FL).

Geithner has already made it verboten for any firms receiving TARP money to lobby anyone from the Treasury Department. I hope there are no exceptions on this one, like there seem to be on many of the Obama Administration ethics rules so far.