FOXNews.com - White House Tells Bankers to Boost Lending After Bailout Successes
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Yes, Mister Obama, bankers are "fatcats". They get together in smokey rooms chewing on big cigars and rub their fat greedy hands together and laugh like this "Mwahahahahaha!" then rake piles of cash onto their bellies.
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Please. If the Right can utilize imagery over and over again (Joe Sixpack, Main Street USA, et al), then Obama can refer to Bankers as Fat Cats who, by and large, have proved to the world that they are indeed sitting in dark smokey rooms chewing on cigars... or at the very least, are giving themselves tremendous bonuses in the midst of economic failure, lying about profits and loss and generally raking in huge profits while there business (and clients) fail.
I agree with you about the right's use of such simplistic imagery as well. We need facts based in reality for making policy decisions; not emotional knee-jerk reactions.
What I was mainly referring to is the mentality that the Bankers "owe" Americans and that now they need to pay it back. Business isn't that simple. For example, if bankers make risky lending decisions that end up costing the bank money they will end up in the hole....again and then what? Do we bail them out again?
If the "people" want their money back, then the bank should pay back the money as scheduled loan payments...not by making more risky financial decisions. To my knowledge (and I may be wrong about this...I don't claim omniscience) their was nothing in the deal for the bailouts that said "oh....and the condition for getting this bailout money is that you have to make more loans to people".
I think you may be right that there was no provision installed saying that the bans had to begin making loans again. There also wasn't a provision that said they couldn't use bail out money to pay top execs absurd bonuses as the walls were crumbling around them. The banks should not begin making risky loans now, but they also can't hoard the money... that would defeat the purpose and intent of the bailouts. Let's try to remember: the bailouts were given, not to save the banks, but to save you and I.
To theoretically save you and I. Many economists argue that it didn't save anyone and merely deferred the losses to other people who are going to be forced to pay for a massive defecit resulting from the bailouts (and the war, of course. The wealth came from borrowing wealth, which will need to be repaid in the future. The gov't may print the money but only productivity creates wealth and governments don't produce; they take.
Banks don't make money by hoarding money...they make money by lending and investing for profit intelligently. If they don't lend, the bank's money will lose value to two major forces: inflation and the interest they pay to depositors. No one wants to make loans more than the banks do since it is their primary source of revenue. It should be obvious to the President that he is preaching to the converted.
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