I Thought The TARP Program Was For “Troubled Assets”
Browsing over this map showing the 444 banks nationally (as of the time of this posting) that got TARP bailouts from the federal government, I was interested to see two banks listed in my home state of North Dakota. Which sort of debunks what we’ve been told by political leaders here that no North Dakota banks are or were in trouble.
Sort of.
What’s interesting is that the press release of one of the bailed out banks, BNCCORP, claims that they were well-capitalized at the time of taking the bailout. So either we wasted $20 million on a TARP bailout for them, or they’re lying to the public about their financial solvency.
Which is it?
Americans were sold on the idea of the Treasury Department bailing out financial institutions in this country, and partly nationalizing them along the way by taking ownership shares, because the politicians said that we couldn’t let the banks fail. We were told that it would be disastrous for our economy. And yet here we have an instance, if the bank’s press release can be believed, of taxpayer money going to a financial institution that would not have failed at all without it.
This isn’t economic rescue, if you ask me. This is fraud.
