La Raison d'entre for the bailout bill

So, the Bushies lied once again - that's to be expected. Nobody but the perma stupid crowd should be surprised.

From yesterday's NYT, found via TPM, an article by Joe Nocera gives the real reason for Paulson's bailout bill - it's to finance the consolidation of the US financial industry into a few large chosen banks. As Nocera notes:

In point of fact, the dirty little secret of the banking industry is that it has no intention of using the money to make new loans.

Here "the money" refers to the money contained in the bailout bill.

All was revealed during an Oct. 17 conference call for JPMorgan Chase employees when the following question was asked:

“Chase recently received $25 billion in federal funding. What effect will that have on the business side and will it change our strategic lending policy?”

Amazingly, one of the executives actually answered the question honestly:

“Twenty-five billion dollars is obviously going to help the folks who are struggling more than Chase,” he began. “What we do think it will help us do is perhaps be a little bit more active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side for some banks who are still struggling. And I would not assume that we are done on the acquisition side just because of the Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns mergers. I think there are going to be some great opportunities for us to grow in this environment, and I think we have an opportunity to use that $25 billion in that way and obviously depending on whether recession turns into depression or what happens in the future, you know, we have that as a backstop.”

Nocera goes on to explain:

Read that answer as many times as you want — you are not going to find a single word in there about making loans to help the American economy. On the contrary: at another point in the conference call, the same executive (who I’m not naming because he didn’t know I would be listening in) explained that “loan dollars are down significantly.” He added, “We would think that loan volume will continue to go down as we continue to tighten credit to fully reflect the high cost of pricing on the loan side.” In other words JPMorgan has no intention of turning on the lending spigot.

It is starting to appear as if one of Treasury’s key rationales for the recapitalization program — namely, that it will cause banks to start lending again — is a fig leaf, Treasury’s version of the weapons of mass destruction.

In fact, Treasury wants banks to acquire each other and is using its power to inject capital to force a new and wrenching round of bank consolidation. As Mark Landler reported in The New York Times earlier this week, “the government wants not only to stabilize the industry, but also to reshape it.” Now they tell us.

Indeed, Mr. Landler’s story noted that Treasury would even funnel some of the bailout money to help banks buy other banks. And, in an almost unnoticed move, it recently put in place a new tax break, worth billions to the banking industry, that has only one purpose: to encourage bank mergers. As a tax expert, Robert Willens, put it: “It couldn’t be clearer if they had taken out an ad.”

Friday delivered the first piece of evidence that this is, indeed, the plan. PNC announced that it was purchasing National City, an acquisition that will be greatly aided by the new tax break, which will allow it to immediately deduct any losses on National City’s books.

As part of the deal, it is also tapping the bailout fund for $7.7 billion, giving the government preferred stock in return. At least some of that $7.7 billion would have gone to NatCity if the government had deemed it worth saving. In other words, the government is giving PNC money that might otherwise have gone to NatCity as a reward for taking over NatCity.

Next Nocera says:

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to feel as if we’ve been sold a bill of goods.

Well that's two of us.

Nocera then concludes with a conversation he had with Senator Chris Dodd:

Late Thursday afternoon, I caught up with Senator Dodd, and asked him what he was going to do if the loan situation didn’t improve. “All I can tell you is that we are going to have the bankers up here, probably in another couple of weeks and we are going to have a very blunt conversation,” he replied.

He continued: “If it turns out that they are hoarding, you’ll have a revolution on your hands. People will be so livid and furious that their tax money is going to line their pockets instead of doing the right thing. There will be hell to pay.”

Let’s hope so.

Its nice to think that "There will be hell to pay" but, based on previous experiences, I seriously doubt it. The Washington establishment, both Dem and Republican, are way too owned to ever do much about another big bank atrocity.