The issue.

Editor,

TARP money was given to the banks to enable them to make the loans that are vital to American commerce and that they lacked the capital to make. The banks used that money instead to acquire other banks and to make enormous profits trading securities. They did not use the money for the purpose for which it was intended.

Now, on top of the bad faith they have thus exhibited to the American public -- to which we can add usurious credit card rate hikes and not renegotiating underwater mortgages -- the banks are distributing among themselves their ill-gotten profits from the trading windfall they enjoyed thanks to the help extended to them by the American taxpayer.

That the banks have or have not paid back the TARP money is not the issue. What they did not do with the TARP money is, as is what they are doing now with the profits they made with it.

re: "Whose Bonuses Are They?" (1/15/2010)