If Ms. Warren gets her way, it could happen:
"The very notion that anyone would infuse money into a financially troubled entity without demanding changes in management is preposterous."
Maybe we shouldn't have infused money in the first place?
The administration is already forcing changes at GM. There's no doubt in my mind that the new directors and officers of GM are going to be very friendly to Obama and his crew. If they get their way with the big financial firms, it's likely going the same way.
Warren, a Harvard law professor and chair of the congressional oversight committee monitoring the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp), is also set to call for shareholders in those institutions to be "wiped out".
I'm not exactly sure what she means by "wiped out," but if she means to dump their shares and leave the government as the sole owner, that's really troubling. The federal government should nor more be in the business of running banks and insuring investments than it should be bailing them out.
Some banks are trying to give the money back.
The banks — Signature Bank of New York; Old National Bancorp of Evansville, Ind.; Iberiabank of Lafayette, La., and Bank of Marin Bancorp of Novato, Calif. — said they had bought back a total of $338 million in their preferred shares, which had been sold to the government in the fall under the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, in exchange for capital.
The administration doesn't seem to be too thrilled, however. It doesn't want the money back, it wants total control of the financial institutions. If they can force out the management, the shareholders, and set salaries? Are they trying to consolidate all banking under the umbrella of the treasury, normalizing salaries, interest rates, etc.? Will a government-run bank be at all competitive with a privately-run bank, or will it be a money pit like Amtrak?
Remember this when you send off your taxes this month, if you haven't already. This is what you're paying for.