Want to unfreeze lending? Give the Bailout Billions to Healthy Small Local Community Banks...

[Blackhatjack]

The Big Banks took the taxpayer Bailout Billions and added it to their balance sheets, which did not restart lending.

Bypass them... give the money to the local community banks, and by golly you will see lending to small businesses and individuals get loans again.

Let the Big Banks refuse the strings attacted to the bailout billions .... the small local banks will take it.

[NightWatcher]

1. um, I dont know about that

Here in Georgia we have had dozens (so it seems) of these tiny 1-branch banks go belly up since last year. They are operating just as dangerously as the big boys, except that they dont have the ability to screw up as big as the BoA's and Citi's.

[NYC_SKP]

3. I wonder how big their bonus payments are? We need to fight the consolidation.

Past trends have been for larger players to gobble up smaller ones.

This is true for everything from media outlets to hardware stores to coffee shops.

We need to vote with our pocketbooks.

:patriot:

[NightWatcher]

4. I think they should turn banks that get bailed out into non-profit credit unions

there are a few places where profit motive doesnt belong: healthcare, education, and the country's ability to exist with fiscal responsibility (ie the Fed).

[NYC_SKP]

2. Great Idea, And I think I'll pull my BofA accounts and work with a local bank.

We can hit them from the top and the bottom.

:patriot:

[robinlynne]

5. EXACTLY! but that is NOT the purpose of the TARP. It is all for Goldman Sachs, etal.

[EFerrari]

10. Exactly. n/t

[Vinca]

6. Maybe they should send large piles of cash to us with the condition

it can only be spent paying down mortgages or credit cards. We'd get something . . . finally . . . and the banks would get cash.

[glitch]

7. K & R

I would give all my Rs for a week on this one.

[wartrace]

8. Why would those banks WANT the money?

Too many strings attached to bailout money.

[justinaforjustice]

9. Too Many Strings? No, Much Too Few.

Trillions of dollars are being handed to the same CEO's who put our economy in melt-down in the first place. While supposedly designed to foster needed loans to industries and consumers, there were no requirements placed on the financial institutions receiving the bail-outs to actually lend the money to anyone. The result is that much of the bail-out was used to pay off other big financial institutions who held credit default swaps, basically gambling debts, not for actual lending.

The bail-outs were designed by the same CEO's who stood to receive pay outs from the bail-outs: the rich bail-out the rich using taxpayers' money. Our big financial services companies produced nothing but fraudulent hot air balloons. They need to be destroyed, not subsidized with additional tax dollars. Our tax dollars should go directly to loans to industries which produce real goods, real value, and to the consumers who purchase those real goods.

Obama is relying on the economic advise of precisely the same guys who destroyed our economy with their greedy push for deregulation so they could rape, pillage and gamble at will. Obama's Treasury Secretary's new "rescue plan" is an attempt to cloak the insolvency of the big financial institutions by creating a new means by which the CEO's can loot the taxpayers. Partnering with hedge funds to buy un-audited toxic assets with taxpayer money is just another Ponzi scheme, drafted to help out the hedge-fund Madoff's. What can Obama's be thinking?

The original poster is right. Our tax money should go to the small banks and credit unions who can pass strict audits for sound lending policies. The majority of the big financial institutions are criminal enterprises which create nothing of value while stealing the hard earned money of our citizens. Unfortunately, the deregulated crooks who are running our big financial institutions are also running our government fiscal policies, and have been since the Reagan administration. Unfortunately, Obama is allowing them to continue to control his fiscal policies; they will destroy the Obama's administration just as they have destroyed our economy.

[wartrace]

12. Too many strings attached for small healthy local banks.

I didn't say there were too many for the big banks.

[TexasObserver]

11. I agree with you! They know what they're doing.

This is a big bank problem, primarily.

[truedelphi]

13. Issa, who stands with Kucinich in leadership positions has pointed this out

Yes, I know we all hate Issa on his social positions. But economically he is heads above many others. And if we don't have a decent recovery, social matters will be pushed into the background anyway.

He has explained again and again that the only way to pull our economy out of this mess is to simply follow the policies enacted in the Recovery Packages approved in the 1980's regarding the S & L scandal. At that time, money was indeed diverted to specific community banks in every region of the country. Those banks were each given a state charter, and then were allowed the Federal Monies. Then the money was funnelled into the community.

[chill_wind]

14. What is worrisome is that if Geithner's plan goes through

it will accomplish just the opposite, bringing - "a consequent weakening of the remaining, smaller, better- managed banks who didn't participate in the garbage-loan frenzy."

(Galbraith)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=114x61152