TARP was profitable yet Obama's still blaming Bush for "inherited mess"

Barack Obama and his Dem friends have been whining for a year about the economic mess they inherited from the Bush Administration. Note: it's not like they unexpectedly inherited a hog farm from a distant relative -- they went after this job knowing full well what problems it entailed. And remember, the Democratic Congress voted for TARP. And everyone knew it was a global meltdown.

So let's look at the facts.

Consider the money that Bush & Pelosi & Reid and everyone who voted for TARP lent to U.S. banks back in 2008. The current liberal whine is that Bush sold out America by giving them free money. Total BS. When Bush loaned the $350 billion, it was with the stipulation that the executives of major banks couldn't receive bonuses until the money was paid back. And ta-da, over the next year the big banks including Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and many others, paid back their TARP money with interest, creating a $4 billion profit for the government that Obama could blow on pointless spending programs.

As usual, Obama did his best to make the situation worse. True to his tax-and-spend ways, he immediately blew the remaining $350 billion in the TARP fund on a financial industry "stimulus" and a further $757 billion recovery binge. Results to-date: unemployment has surged to over 10%, the economy still lags and non-interventionist countries are already out of recession.

Is Obama going to start blackmailing banks again?

The lesson Democrats learned from Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts special election was not that Obama's health care plan is a failure. Somehow, it's that Barack Obama isn't doing enough taking on the banks. With his ears ever attuned to left-wing radicals, Obama is now shadowboxing American banking institutions, pledging to stop the excesses of big banks, many of which lined his pockets during the campaign.

So is Obama going to start blackmailing banks again? A few months back, Pierre Sutton, president of Inner City Broadcasting Corp which owns minority radio shows, was suddenly granted a loan by Goldman Sachs. This was done even though Inner City was in financial ruin. It was all courtesy of Obama, who knew Mr. Sutton, and his treasury secretary and former Goldman Sachs man Timothy Geithner.

This cronyism was similar to another incident when Obama was a senator. In 2008 a company called Republic Windows & Doors shuttered a plant and laid off workers after Bank of America refused a loan to the failing company. The workers went on strike and then-Governor Rod Blagojevich stepped in, threatening to cut off all Illinois government business with Bank of America unless the loan was made. BoA quickly conceded. Barack Obama supported this blackmail, saying, "They're absolutely right. These workers, if they have earned these benefits and their pay, then these companies need to follow through on those commitments."

For banks that are so powerful and dangerous, Obama sure seems like he's able to control them pretty easily. Keep an eye out for this sort of Chicago politics coming up.