Won’t get fooled again?

2009 February 12
by The Editor

So those pesky big-bank CEOs were back in Washington yesterday, telling congressional leaders why they needed more money and assuring them that this time it would be different. They don’t want too much regulation, of course, but they’ll take a little more than they might have a couple years. So complicit were the CEOs that one, Vikram Pandit of Citigroup, suggested his salary be cut to $1 a year till his bank is profitable again. Quite a tell, if you ask me. Nobody volunteers to live off a buck year unless they have so many bucks already they can afford it.

Naturally, some members of the House Financial Services Committee weren’t so sure they want to trust these fat cats one more time without serious oversight capabilities. According to a Bloomberg report, Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), summed it up best, saying, “We listen to you and we hear words, words, words, and no answers.”

You can’t blame Ackerman or his colleagues. The much bally-hooed TARP bail-out from last fall may have stabilized the big banks, but it didn’t do much to help out folks like you and me who might need an infusion of cash of our own. And that was, after all, supposed to be the beauty of part, as my mother would say.

So here’s hoping the congressional watchdogs continue to push the big banks to use their government moolah for the good of investors and those of us living and working down on Main Street. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

from → economy

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