WHERE'S THE HONOR AMONG AMERICAS LARGEST WELFARE RECIPIENTS?

In light of the failure of financial institutions to expend TARP monies with full transparency -and without capricious arrogance dripping like frozen molasses in January from their P.R. personnel when called to account for monies received- you may find the following of interest.

The following items appeared on page A39 of NEWSDAY on Tueday, December 23rd, 2008.

LI pols: Rescue a 'disappointment':
* "It's an enormous disapointment," said Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton). "I think one can argue that the secretary has complied with the letter of the legislation, but clearly has not complied with congressional intent. I sort of feel we have spent $335 billion and have very little to show for it."

* "Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola) said she is "very dissapointed" in Paulson. "We gave him the tools to certainly have the transparency there," she said. "Why didn't he use the tools the way they were intended to be used? He is the one who is supposed to have the pulse on all of this."

* "Republican Rep. Peter King of Seaford issued a statement saying there should be more oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. "After all, these are taxpayer dollars. As Congress considers releasing the remaining TARP funds it must include tighter restrictions and an increased transparency of the program."

* "Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Jamaica Estates) complained that Congress gave Paulson "$350 billion for a specific flight plan, so he flew somewhere else...We are going to make sure there are controls, he said. "We are going to write it into law that banks can't use it for bonuses."

And in a graph on the same page A39, a list appeared detailing how many taxpayer dollars have been doled out to corporate welfare recipients. The cited source was the U.S. Treasury:

Citigroup: $25 billion*
JPMorgan Chase & Co.: $25 billion
Wells Fargo & Co.: $25 billion
Bank of America Corp.: $15 billion
Merrill Lynch Y Co.: $10 billion
Morgan Stanley: $10 billion
Goldman Sachs: $10 billion **
U.S. Bancorp: $6.6 billion
Capital One Financial: $3.6 billion ***
Regions Financial Corp.: $3.5 billion

* Citigroup has received $20 billion more for a total of $45 billion.

** This was Treas. Secretary Paulson's employer prior to his stint at Treasury.

*** "What's in your wallet" is a key line from some of their credit card ads. We know what's in their wallet now.....our tax dollars.

Now, if we can give out billions of dollars with minimal congressional hearings because Congress believed the pleadings for haste from the same Administration that gave us non-existent WMD in Iraq, and it can be disbursed with such speed that it was impossible to establish effective monitoring of disbursements, why then does it take until June 2010 for the revised credit card rules to take effect?

We bail out incompetence with such speed that it makes a Piper Cub look like the Concorde, all the while the middle class from whom the majority of this taxpayer money is being misappropriated has to wait over a year for relief from onerous credit card policies inflicted upon them by credit card issurers; including one that got a $3.6 billion dollar hand out...Capital One?

Don't worry; things take awhile to change on the shores of the Potomac in DC. After all, this is the federal government. It is the same entity that years ago had purchasing agents at DoD paying thousands of dollars for toilet seats for the Air Force. They don't do that as often anymore. Now, in DC, they just flush taxpayer money down the drain of Wall Street and of banking houses across the nation.

"What's in your wallet?" may be a catchy slogan for a credit card program, but after TARP, the answer from taxpayers and the US Treasury should be the same: "Not much!"