Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Banks still swilling champagne with your money

Apparently the banks still think Americans don't understand the basics of money. One of the fundamental properties of money and all currency is that it is fungible. What this means is that there is no difference between units of the same currency. Your dollar bill is worth the same as my dollar bill, when I have 100 dollar bills, it doesn't matter which ones I use to pay a debt with.

So when Citibank says "No TARP capital will be used for the stadium" referring to the $400 million deal that Citibank has made with the Mets, it is a LIE. This is not an exaggeration, an obfuscation, or a misstatement. It is a flat out lie. As they are BANKERS, they do know that money is fungible. Of course, my nieces know that as well, so it isn't much of a standard. Citibank is not alone in this, Bank of America spent $10 million on a big Super Bowl party. Of course all of this pales in comparison to the direct looting of taxpayers with the bonus payouts in 2008, Wall Street payed out $18,000,000,000 in bonuses. That is 5% of the first set of TARP payouts. In contrast, House Republicans unanimously voted down a stimulus package for regular people like you and I because 1% of the funds went to provisions that they disagreed with.

The class warfare is stunning. If you are a rich investment banker, you get billions of dollars, if you are a regular guy... You get to pay the rich banker. Color me disgusted.

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