bailout
Thursday, January 8, 2009
bailout / stimulus / economy Otter on fed stimulus: It's complicated
Posted by Nathaniel Hoffman on Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 3:16 PM
Gov. C. L. "Butch" Otter, addressing a media scrum assembled by Boise's Associated Press shop this morning, said that he's not sure he'd vote for an "economic stimulus" package were he still in Congress today.
Monday, December 22, 2008
bailout / banks / TARP Idaho bank gets bailout
Posted by Nathaniel Hoffman on Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 12:30 PM
With almost $200 billion in federal bank bailout funds out the door and another $47 billion approved as of Dec. 22, the official U.S. Treasury Department position remains “trust us.”
The Troubled Asset Relief Program, that $700 billion bill that Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed in October, was intended to encourage banks to start extending credit again. But no one has tracked what the banks are doing with the money.
“Each financial institution’s circumstances are different, making comparisons challenging at best, and it is difficult to track where individual dollars flow through an organization,” said Treasury official Neel Kashkari earlier this month, according to Propublica.org, an investigative news site that is tracking bailout funds.
But that ‘s more than Curt Hecker, CEO of Intermountain Community Bancorp, pictured above, is saying.
Hecker, whose Sandpoint-based bank is the only Idaho bank to receive bailout funds to date—$27 million—did not return repeated phone calls to citydesk over the course of a week.
Intermountain, a holding company for Panhandle State Bank, the largest locally owned state bank in Idaho, applied for the TARP money and was approved Nov. 7.
“Our concern in this is what are we getting for the money? There’s no requirement for the banks to lend the money,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, which is researching each of the banks that has taken bailout money.
So where’s your TARP money going, Hecker?
Monday, September 29, 2008
bailout / elections Minnick, Sali Agree; Sort Of
Posted by Deanna Darr on Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 5:02 PM
Turns out both Republican Rep. Bill Sali and his Democratic congressional challenger Walt Minnick agree on one thing: The proposed Congressional bailout of the faltering economy was a bad idea. The two political competitors just have very different reasons.
Sali joined the majority of the House of Representatives on Monday, Sept. 29 when he voted against the proposed $700-billon bailout plan—a decision that sent the Dow Jones spiraling downward in its worst single-day loss in history.
For Sali, the issue is putting the burden on taxpayers. Instead of having the government buy up the bad investments slogging the national and global credit system, he is in favor of providing tax incentives to encourage private industry to do it instead.
“We need a solution that does not jeopardize taxpayers and does not fundamentally change the relationship [between government and business],” said Sali’s spokesperson Wayne Hoffman.
Sali is part of a bipartisan coalition working on its own plan. Among the possibilities is eliminating or reducing taxes on private investors willing to buy bad investments.
Hoffman said the coalition is also looking at ways to modify fair-value accounting, but said the details of that option are still being worked through.
“There’s a lot of really fresh ideas out there that weren’t considered before, that need to be considered,” Hoffman said.
And while Minnick agrees that the proposal before congress was a poor one, he still believes that the government needs to step in to protect the integrity of markets both in the United States and around the world. The key to that, is providing liquidity, allowing financial institutions to continue the lending cycle, Minnick said.
But rather than a pay-out, Minnick supports short-term loans “not taking bad assets off of questionable banks.”
If the loans aren’t repaid on time, he feels the corporations should be treated like everyone else, and the loan should be foreclosed. He also strongly believes that the CEOs of companies that opt for governmental help should not receive any financial benefit.
“If the taxpayers were going to be asked to step in and help, the CEOs shouldn’t have a plug nickle in termination pay,” Minnick said. “There’s no termination pay for a CEO who has ruined the company.”
Minnick, two large companies, including serving as CEO of Trus Joist, said he would never have expected to benefit if he had ruined one of his companies.
“If I had ruined my company, the board would make sure I was ousted on my ear,” he said.
Adding larger regulatory reform is also imperative to any plan, Minnick said. Among his suggestions is consolidating the number of agencies which have oversight of the financial industry and making sure every aspect of the industry has some federal regulation.
“It’s very hard to get regulatory reform through Congress,” he said. “If you miss this train out of the station, it’s going to be very hard to get it through later.”
Minnick said Sali’s idea of tax incentives for private industry “sounds like nonsense” and doesn’t address the current issue. “We need to keep the banking industry functioning,” he said.
Both Minnick and Sali agree that something needs to happen soon. Hoffman said Sali and other coalition members are working as fast as they can and will hopefully have a new proposal available to the public soon.
Minnick believes time is imperative to stopping the situation from getting any worse.
“We are in a recession,” he said. “We need to act quickly [to] prevent a global depression.”
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