The other way around.

Editor,

That article made smoke come out of my ears also.

We the American people were decimated financially by the crimes the Wall Street mob committed -- lost our jobs, our homes, our savings, our retirements, and ultimately the essential services that our federal, state, and local governments provide.

And we the American people bailed those self-same criminals out -- to the tune of $700 billion in up-front cash, near-zero loans from the Federal Reserve that they get to mark up when they loan it back to us by using it to buy U.S. Treasury Bills, and trillions of dollars of loan guarantees to keep the casino afloat.

And -- here is my point -- after all the damage those sharpies did, that article reported that they "paid back" what we loaned them to bail them out. But paying that TARP loan back and then giving themselves billions of dollars in bonuses wasn't what that loan was supposed to be about. That loan was intended to keep the economy from collapsing altogether, not set those bankers up to keep sucking as much money out of the American economy as they can.

Those bankers should be working for us now, but thanks to our courageous representatives in Washington it is still the other way around.

Re: "Outside the Casino" (7/13/2010)