The Bailouts, Round 2: JPM To Buy BAC With 100 Billion Tax Dollars

Word floating that Little Timmy will be ponying up 100 billion dollars of OUR MONEY to make the pending Bank of America failure less traumatic to the banksters.

If the House Republicans want to live up to the promises they made the voters, they need to scream bloody murder at the very top of their lungs.

Three years ago, we were all caught by surprise, and the dirty deeds were done before we could understand what was happening.

Now, no longer. We have all grown cynical, and informed.

BAC is the product of a shotgun marriage, paid for with tax dollars, as they took over Merrill Lynch, shortly after buying Countrywide. That worked out well, did it not?

Now for the next round, to attempt to paper over that mess.

Whatever happened to the concept of risk in business? Or is that just for small, Main Street businesses, small banks, individual families?

This will not end well, ya'll.

The Bank of America Settlement: Too Big To Fail, Too Stupid To Succeed, And Too Politically Connected To Ever Go To Jail

Denninger asks the correct questions again, as always, even if he is constantly abrasive in tone.

How does he do it and not suffer a blood pressure of infinity-over-275?

Well, anyway, this news brought my friend Billy The Banker to mind. He's now retired, happily, after working for the same county-seat bank for fifty years. High school diploma plus banking courses offered over the years. He advanced from junior teller to president. When all the chaos was going on in 2008, OS asked him what he thought, and he scratched his head and said, 'I don't know what to think, I've never seen anything like it. Our board of directors always wanted to make sure we had a strong equity base, and enough earnings to take care of the employees and pay a little dividend to the shareholders. That's what we did, concentrated on building the equity of the bank. It worked. I don't understand these other people at all.'

OS does know one thing: Had Billy behaved like the execs at BOA, his bank would have failed, and he'd be living out his retirement years in the state pen about thirty miles west of his present modest comfortable home.

Billy lived and worked in a context of reward for good behavior, and legal and moral culpability for bad behavior. His bank made money, his shareholders made money, the county is growing at a stable pace, and he's enjoying visiting his grandkids.

Now, What We Really Lack Are Criminal Prosecutions Of Criminal Acts: Utah Begins To Confront BofA

Finally, one state AG located his spine. Finally.

The vision of Utah State Troopers hauling BofA out of their offices in New York and Charlotte, into the vans, and onto a state-chartered airplane does hold a certain appeal.

Make them miss their tee times, for say, the next fifteen years. Sobriety might just make a return visit to the banking industry.

If small businessmen or ordinary citizens act with such utter contempt of law or decency, they are out of business at least, and risk jail. Apart from Madoff, who turned himself in, have we seen any criminal prosecutions flow from the 2007-2008 debacle?

We're not there yet, but one AG, somewhere, will step up before too long, as the real damage to the economy and culture really set in, and the extent and shamelessness of the screwing administered this country become more apparent.