(playing of Banking Queen song)
I’m still thinking here, ladies and gentlemen, about the community food alliance of Palm Beach County and 211. That’s what you call up here, anything from suicide to out of food stamps. And I’m thinking for $83 million, you get a live human being to answer the phone. You get two live human beings, one in Spanish and one in English. Oh, yeah. The Barney Frank update. This is from Byron York at the DC Examiner today: ‘When President Obama announced on June 9 that some financial institutions would be allowed to repay Troubled Asset Relief Program dollars, he said the massively expensive TARP bailout had made money for the federal government.’ Big whoop. (laughing) Did you see the deficit? This is what I mean. ‘The economy’s coming back.’ We’re at 9.5% unemployment! ‘TARP profits made money for the government.’ We have deficits over $2 trillion this year alone! ‘It is worth noting,’ the president said, ‘that in the first round of repayments from these [TARP recipients], the government has actually turned a profit.’
‘But now Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee,’ the man largely responsible with Christopher Dodd in the Senate for the subprime lending fiasco and crisis ‘has come up with a proposal to spend any TARP profits before they can be returned to the taxpayers. Last Friday, Frank introduced the ‘TARP for Main Street Act of 2009,’ a bill that would take profits from the program and immediately redirect them toward housing proposals favored by Frank and some fellow Democrats.’ Just recycle the problem. ‘In exchange for receiving TARP money, financial institutions were required to hand over shares of preferred stock that paid a dividend for the government.’ So they were forced to take the bailout money, when they wanted to give it back they had to give up equity.
‘In theory, if a financial institution paid the dividend faithfully, and then repaid the TARP money, then the government would turn a profit,’ on that exchange. ‘Last month, the General Accountability Office (GAO) reported that, through June 12, 2009, the government had received $6.2 billion in dividend payments. The original TARP legislation required that money made from the program ‘shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt,” but now Barney Frank wants to spend it before it gets to the Treasury! (laughing) I’m sorry, folks. I can’t stop laughing about all this stuff. I mean, I’m angry as you are about it. It is just so brazen. It’s so out-in-the-open for everybody to see.