The Biggest Bank Heist in History
Jesse James and Willie Sutton, you were on the wrong side of the bars. Not the jail cell, the teller’s cage. Had you been working for the banks, instead of sticking them up for chump change, you could have accumulated far more wealth, without the remotest possibility of doing time.
Banks have always found innovative ways to rob their customers. But today, why settle for slapping borrowers with nasty gotcha! late fees and predatory interest rates, when you can pocket an enormous lump-sum payout from your rich uncle in one serving. Just cry poverty. The government is all too happy to shower you with billions of dollars of bailout money, which, as a typical ad for a bank loan might suggest, “you can spend however you wish.” And that’s exactly what they’re doing. With virtually zero accountability.
If you think that’s an exaggeration, Elizabeth Warren, head of the Congressional panel overseeing the $700 billion bailout program, recently told ABC’s Good Morning America that the Treasury “didn’t tell the banks what they had to do in order to get the money.” The panel reported “it has no idea” what banks are doing with the billions in cash lawmakers approved last fall to address the financial crisis.
I know what they’re doing with the money. You know what they’re doing with the money. They’re doing what any profligate person or entity would do if so lavishly rewarded for their failures: whatever they damn please. And that includes hording it, doling out bonuses and stock options to themselves, going on bank-buying spending sprees…anything but pass it along to their distressed customers. You don’t become responsible overnight when your infusion of cash comes with no conditions.
If no one else will say it, I will. This is the biggest, most audacious raid on the U.S. Treasury ever perpetrated against the American taxpayer—who, as we’re already witnessing, is deriving little or no benefit from it. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has taken our lawmakers to the cleaners. They’ve been duped into blessing a wholesale giveaway of already $350 billion to people who are motivated solely by their own greed. Anyone with even a modicum of financial savvy could see the dim-wittedness Congress displayed in this hastily devised transaction—how they giddily relinquished to Paulson almost absolute power to rescue his friends in the private sector. That’s why the anger engendered among us middle class saps by the mutual back-scratching of government and business has never been more palpable and rankling.
I recently visited the ATM at a local branch of Citibank, whose parent company is receiving more than $300 billion in bailout assistance. It was nighttime and the branch was closed, but the entire place was lit up like an operating room, with obvious little concern for the electricity they were senselessly burning. This is a small but glaring example of the indifference companies show when you give them money outright without making them accountable for it. Why watch expenses, why establish sound banking practices when you know there’s more easy cash waiting to be handed out?
Have the American people gotten so much as a thank-you from those financial institutions we’ve brought back from the brink? I haven’t seen or heard any. On the contrary, many banks are now raising their fees for many services while lowering interest rates on deposits to almost laughable levels. For example, Citibank is now charging an extra $10 each time you use your overdraft protection, in addition to the high rate of interest you pay on the amount covered. Yet returning to that night I visited my local branch, neither of the pens in the ATM area were working, so I had to go back out and retrieve one from my car. I left the pen on the counter with a note asking subsequent customers to leave the pen there for others to use. Well, at least we know what the banks are not doing with their bailout money.
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