[quote=briansd1] Another non-populist view of the Tea Party’s is to give a free pass to the banks for the bailouts they received. Granted, the Tea Party is against bailouts. But now that they bailouts have happened, the Tea Party is against taxing the banks to recover the money. So the banks essentially got a free ride. [/quote]This is not completely true. I covered this earlier. The banks had to pay back the TARP money, or become owned by the Gov. They were also charged an interest rate on the TARP money. There were more ‘insidious’ portions though. The interest rate depended upon how politically ‘favored’, from the Goldman Sachs point of view, the particular bank was. From what I could tell, GS paid 0% interest on their TARP money, BofA paid 5%.. and Freddy/Fannie paid 10%. The mortgage bankers do not like Freddy and Fannie because these institutions for a ceiling on what interest can be charged on Mortgages. There are a few banks, very few, that have not paid back the TARP money (CIT, FRE, FNM come to mind. GS doesn’t want FRE and FNM to recover, so the interest rate is so high that the 2-3%margin on mortgages can’t cover the TARP’s loan interest).

On the other hand, the Fed and local governments have been continually tampering with laws with respect to loans and mortgages. It makes it hard for banks to know how to handle lending.

BTW, looking at the banks for money right now is not the right focus. Try looking at the oil companies. They got a gimmie under Bush in terms of tax giveaways.