Fight building over judges redoing mortgages

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BILL MOYERS: Well we'll find out what this means as President Obama confronts one of his first big challenges — the bankers and the bailout.

Usually it's the bandits robbing the banks. But now it's getting hard to tell the bankers from the bandits. Where have they stashed the loot — that 350 billion dollars of our money that the Bush Administration lavished on them to jump-start our failing economy?

For a story in last Sunday's "New York Times", largely overlooked in all the pre-inaugural hoopla, reporter Mike Mcintire reviewed investor presentations and conference calls to see how bankers talk when they think the rest of us aren't listening.

This from Boston Private Wealth Management, a healthy bank that was handed $154 million:

"With that capital in hand <...> we'll be in a position to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves once this recession is sorted out."

Once this recession is sorted out? Those funds are supposed to generate loans for people and small businesses in trouble — not to help banks ride out the recession on a cushion of cash.

Then there's this bit of Simon Legree mustache-twirling from the chairman of Whitney National Bank in New Orleans. They've received 300 million dollars in bailout boodle:

"Make more loans?" he asked. "We're not going to change our business model or our credit policies to accommodate the needs of the public sector as they see it to have us make more loans."

I'm not making this up — Flushing Financial crowed that it was newly flush enough to use the bailout bucks to raise the ante and buy new companies:

"We can get $70 million in capital," their CEO said. "So, I would say the price of poker, so to speak, has gone up." And, so to speak, he's playing with our chips!

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01232009/transcript4.html