TARP Bonus Recipient Punishment Bill in Da House!!!

I've had mixed feelings about the whole AIG bonus controversy that's been dominating the news this week. Of course it's pretty insulting that everyone at the Financial Products division is getting big bonuses after basically bringing down the whole economy by themselves. And I'm pretty sure some of those cats should be going to prison for fraud.

But the media feeding frenzy seems awfully contrived and the Congressional reaction has been transparently contrived. It all seems like they all watched the Jon Stewart drubbing of Jim Cramer and felt like they just had to find something to get really angry about. This AIG stuff is outrageous but no more outrageous than any of the other nasty stuff we've been hearing for months and months about the larger Wall Street environment or some of the more specific things about private planes and refurbished offices, etc.

However, the Congressional Democrats felt the rage and proposed a plan to do something about it - to recoup the bonus money back for the taxpayers by taxing the hell out of the assholes that got paid to destroy the economy. And it passed the House of Representatives just now by an overwhelming margin.

Here's how YOUR Louisiana Representatives voted:


01 Steve Scalise: NAY
02 Joe Cao: YEA
03 Melancon: YEA
04 Fleming: YEA
05 Alexander: YEA
06 Cassidy: YEA
07 Boustany: NO VOTE

Idiots

Senator Claire McCaskill throws down.




Dems gotta stay fired up like this for all of the important issues. (Hat tip: Al Giordano, who then highlights the new Obama plan to address the Senator's concerns.)

Good Corporate Citizen

Oyster highlights an old quote from a few weeks ago by one of New Orleans' benevolent business overlords.

From the NYT:

At the Palm Beach Ritz-Carlton last November, John C. Hope III, the chairman of Whitney National Bank in New Orleans, stood before a ballroom full of Wall Street analysts and explained how his bank intended to use its $300 million in federal bailout money.

“Make more loans?” Mr. Hope said. “We’re not going to change our business model or our credit policies to accommodate the needs of the public sector as they see it to have us make more loans.”

--

For Mr. Hope, the Whitney National Bank chairman, “the main motivation for TARP” was not more loans, but rather to safeguard against the “possibility things could get a lot worse.” He said Whitney would continue making loans “that we would have made with or without TARP.”

“We see TARP as an insurance policy,” he said. “That when all this stuff is finally over, no matter how bad it gets, we’re going to be one of the remaining banks.”

Financial corporations act in the interest of financial corporations. Who'd have thunk it?

Taxpayers gave Whitney Bank $300,000,000 for absolutely nothing.

If we try to raise corporate taxes in two or three years to help recoup our losses or to fund more infrastructure, will bankers remember this great favor we've granted?