And Now for Something Completely Different
Some banks don’t want taxpayer money. From the AP:
A small but growing number of community banks are backing out of the government’s bailout, which they see as fraught with hidden strings and government interference.About 20 banks so far that applied for or had been approved to receive about $1 billion combined in taxpayer money have reversed course in the past month and refused to take the money. That’s just a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars the government already has spent, but it shows that taxpayers aren’t the only ones anxious about the financial bailout.”The government’s going to own a good portion of these banks,” said David Heintzman, president of Stock Yards Bank & Trust in Louisville, Ky. The bank recently turned down $43 million in approved bailout money. More…
A list is here.
Comment by John Ballantyne on 31 January 2009:
History does repeat itself….How sad!The term boondoggle, in the sense of a project that wastes
> time and money, first appeared during the Great Depression
> in the 1930s, referring to the millions of jobs given to
> unemployed men and women to try to get the economy moving
> again, as part of the New Deal. It came into common usage
> after a 1935 New York Times headline claimed that over $3
> million had been spent teaching the jobless how to make boon
> doggles.