The truth is that Goldman only wants to repay TARP so it can get back to giving themselves huge bonuses. Per the WSJ, one in 30 GS employees makes at least a million a year. The interest rates on TARP are much lower than the loan Buffett gave them. If not for GS salaries, it makes more sense to repay that loan than TARP.

And the notion that GS is somehow patriotic in paying back the TARP is comical. They have borrowed $29 billion from the Fed since becoming a bank holding company.

The U.S. taxpayer is not bailing out a bank with GS. They are bailing out a casino. Why in the hell has this been allowed to happen? Hank Paulson.

This is spot on. There are event risks from the Washington weekend warriors. In fact, Obama’s three musketeers hit each major network this weekend. Axelrod hit ABC, Emmannuel hit CBS, and Summers hit NBC.

What Axelrod said was (Drum Roll please) that “the banks want the ‘market to know’ the health of their balance sheets. The American people ‘can handle the truth.’”

Of the three musketeers, all for one and one for all, Axelrod wins the White House administration for telling the biggest whopper of all this weekend. If banks wanted the market to know the truth, this is only so because they can now lie about the health of their balance sheets after eliminated the FV rule. And secondly, yes, the American people can handle the truth, but what the banksters and white house administrators are absolutely incapable of doing is administering the truth.

The effect that the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) on the housing is one of the touchier questions in the financial crisis debate. The act was designed to encourage more minority lending, and though it doesn’t require banks to lend out to shaky borrowers, banks make certain CRA commitments in order to get regulatory approval for acquisitions.

A possible effect of this is that banks wishing to grow via acquisition end up with an outsize volume of these commitments.

So what’s the effect at national banking giant Bank of America (BAC).

On the company’s conference call, CFO Joe Price said the CRA book accounts for 7% of the total in residential mortgages, but 24% of the losses.

That alone doesn’t put all the problem on the CRA’ shoulders, but obviously the losses in this portfolio are way out of proportion.

Clusterstock

http://tinyurl.com/df5so8

How Much Could the Government Lose on TARP?

A research firm says the U.S. lost $104 billion on the ownership stakes it took in financial companies in return for TARP funds. Losses could mount

Probably the Chinese don’t read business week…Franklin 411..where are you man…you are allowing us gloomy guses to blog about the real world…give us your best pitch, man…I need to hear about those green shoots again…

How Canadian shoppers buck global trend

“That doesn’t mean they will behave in a way that companies would describe as happy.

Quite the opposite.

European respondents planning to cut discretionary spending in the next 12 months range from 59 per cent in France to 70 per cent in Spain. (And 64 per cent in Germany.) “……….

….And I believe an economist over the weekend, in discussing the coming year and
American business prospects, said that government and exports were the only two stimulatives he saw…

Down goes Frazier…on exports…