“I am no fan of Wagoners, but I have to ask the geniuses behind the bank bailouts: When are you going to ask the TARP and bailout recipients to step down? Ken Lewis being asked to step aside after many years of running BofA ? How about Blankfein? Pandit? And the rest of the TARP recipients?”
Evidently people have a short memory. The TARP was given to both healthy and ill banks at the same time so as to make it less likely that there would be a ‘run on the bank’. This also makes it harder to tell the healthy from the sick.. Because of the restrictions that were added on after the fact, many of the good banks are now trying to pay the money back. As for BofA, they were going to step out of the purchase of Merrill Lynch, but were forced to the alter via a $20Bil shotgun (otherwise BofA would not do the deal – I am amazed about how many people get this one part wrong…. I wonder if BofA now thinks $20Bil was enough to complete it). BofA is looking at starting repayments as early as this April, possibly paying it all back by fy2010/2011…. Can GM/Chrysler do the same?
