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veronica_rich"Hey, kid! Share the damn candy, quit stuffing it all in your pockets!"
You mark this date, because it's like only the second time this White House has done anything I can get behind in eight years. If you don't want to click, here it is: Basically, the Congress passed this $700 billion bailout package and, in the spirit of Halloween, now the feds are trying to figure out how to dole out the candy. About a third of it is going to go to banks to help them make loans to you and me ... except, there was nothing in the legislation saying it HAD to be used to make loans, so lately, banks have been rumbling that they'd like to either keep what they get to boost their bottom line in end-of-the-year reports or - and I'd say this is the REAL desire - use it to buy out smaller banks. Which means the White House is having to play Grandma and yell at them to share their Snickers bars with the smaller kids, rather than sock them all away to bribe other bullies at the schoolyard for their protection money.
The most amusing part of the article? Officials have said that there are few strings attached to the capital-infusion program because too many rules would discourage financial institutions from participating. Hey - I say if you don't want the taxpayer money, nobody's forcing you to take the taxpayer money. Obviously you don't NEED it much if you don't want to play by the rules Grandma sets out.
Now ... for your feel-good story of the day: 109-year-old daughter of slave lives long enough to vote for a black presidential candidate. Fabulous.
You mark this date, because it's like only the second time this White House has done anything I can get behind in eight years. If you don't want to click, here it is: Basically, the Congress passed this $700 billion bailout package and, in the spirit of Halloween, now the feds are trying to figure out how to dole out the candy. About a third of it is going to go to banks to help them make loans to you and me ... except, there was nothing in the legislation saying it HAD to be used to make loans, so lately, banks have been rumbling that they'd like to either keep what they get to boost their bottom line in end-of-the-year reports or - and I'd say this is the REAL desire - use it to buy out smaller banks. Which means the White House is having to play Grandma and yell at them to share their Snickers bars with the smaller kids, rather than sock them all away to bribe other bullies at the schoolyard for their protection money.
The most amusing part of the article? Officials have said that there are few strings attached to the capital-infusion program because too many rules would discourage financial institutions from participating. Hey - I say if you don't want the taxpayer money, nobody's forcing you to take the taxpayer money. Obviously you don't NEED it much if you don't want to play by the rules Grandma sets out.
Now ... for your feel-good story of the day: 109-year-old daughter of slave lives long enough to vote for a black presidential candidate. Fabulous.
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Date: 2008-10-29 03:29 am (UTC)Those banks have spent or set aside $108 billion to pay out bonuses to top executives... The bonuses would reportedly range from around $100,000 for a lower-level employee to over $1 million for senior employees. Experts have said the payouts will be plumper than they would have been in such a disastrous year because of the taxpayer money flowing into the institutions.