by Bill Stone

Created on: December 13, 2010

What kind of callous idiot could possibly think that banks should continue paying huge sums of money and massive bonuses to their executives while the rest of the country is in a financial crisis?  Before we try to go tell the big banks how to run their businesses, let's take a look at the facts, shall we?

There was a bank bailout.  The TARP program gave financial stimulus money to banks to bail them out of a bad situation that they themselves helped to perpetuate.  This was done because banks were "too important or too big to fail."  That money was taxpayer money.  Does that give us the right to tell the banks what to do with that money?  Indeed, it does.  While the banks still had an outstanding loan to the government, we could dictate the terms of that loan, and we could even express outrage at how the banks decided to use the funds from that loan.

News flash: those loans have all been repaid.

The banks no longer have any outstanding loans with the government.  Your tax dollars are no longer helping the banks out.  They are back on their own now, doing their business as usual.

So we've bailed them out once.  Does that NOW give us the right to tell the banks what to do with THEIR money, because we bailed them out once?  Sadly, it does not.  We may have had a right to tell banks what to do with OUR taxpayer money while they still had it.  But now that they don't, we don't have a right to tell banks what they spend their money on.  If they want to pay their executives tiny salaries and huge bonuses, that's their business.  If they want to decorate all their banks with little rubber spiders, that too is their business.  Why do we suddenly get to tell banks what to do because we bailed them out once?

People like to think that they can solve all of the injustices of the world simply because they feel like it's an injustice.  However, we don't have any right to tell the banks how to spend their own money, just as I have no right to tell you how to spend your money, and how much money you can choose to give to the Salvation Army if you so choose, or how much money you choose to roll into little cigars and set on fire.  It's your money; I don't get to tell you what to do with it.

The same holds true for banks.  They are not beholden to us.  We don't have any taxpayer money in the banks.  We don't get to tell them what to do with their money.  I'd sure like it if they spent it on me, but I'm not a bank executive.  How they choose to spend their money is their business, not ours.

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