by Mark Silva
Perhaps it's all the advice that Dick Cheney is giving the Obama administration lately. Perhaps it's the fact that Bill Clinton's Clinton Global Initiative was talking today, with the CEOs of Coca Cola and Archer Daniels Midland at the Brookings Institution, about how business can do well by doing good.
Whatever it is, the 42nd president got in the mood to offer some advice to the 44th, and did so today, in an interview with Bloomberg News.
The Obama administration should make a "genuine effort" to encourage healthy banks to repay the Troubled Asset Relief Program so that financial institutions can set executive compensation without fearing a public backlash, Bloomberg reports.
"Give them a chance to pay it back and maybe just give it back without the interest or anything else," Clinton said in his interview with Bloomberg. The government could say, "You're back on your own; pay whatever you want," he suggested.
The administration should "go back to all these TARP recipients who in effect were told by" former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to accept funds and let them repay loans, he said.. "The people who were told by the previous government that they had to take the TARP money, once these restrictions came down, they should have had the opportunity to give the money back to avoid" government interference on pay for executives and other matters.
The former president also said that Larry Summers, Clinton's last Treasury secretary, would make a good chairman of the Federal Reserve -- though the advisory role that he is serving for Obama now works well. "I like knowing that he's where he is," Clinton said, "for the simple reason that he lived eight years through this system we set up."
Asked if Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke should be reappointed, Clinton said, "That's beyond my pay grade. Whoever the president appoints is fine with me."
So this isn't Dick Cheney talking, after all.
(Bill Clinton pictured at a panel discussion that his CGI sponsored at the Brookings Institution in Washington,today. Photo by Jim LoScalzo / Bloomberg News)
Comments
i miss Bill Clinton
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http://adugan-billclintonblog.blogspot.com/
Posted by: adugan | May 13, 2009 9:49 PM
I wonder if this receipient of federal funds will have to renegotiate the contracts of some its "top performers"?
http://seekingalpha.com/article/105984-general-electric-gets-a-140b-bailout-what-s-the-point-of-aaa
Will this individual's contract be renegotiated like that of the traders at CitiBank?
http://www.mediapundit.net/2008/11/msnbc-extends-keith-olbermanns-contract.html
Did you notice the day of No Ratings Keith's contract and the GE getting federal funds were days apart?
Posted by: Terry | May 13, 2009 10:08 PM
Yet another example of why Hillary and Clintonism failed last year.
Let them "pay it back without interest"??
Trillions interest free?
Right-o, BillyBob.
Posted by: ornery | May 13, 2009 10:12 PM
Ornery, sorry to inform you but the banks have not received trillions -- yet, anyway. Also, ornery, many banks have been wanting to pay back the money, but Tax-Cheat-in-Chief Tim Geithner and the Messiah refuse to let them do so. Why? Could it be because they want to continue running the banks?
By the way, this is one of the rare times where I actually agree with the former mate of that woman, Miss Lewinsky.
Posted by: John D | May 14, 2009 10:00 AM
Sorry, the bankers are just servicing BillyBob the way Monica used to.
Plus he's found a way to get $$$ from them as well. To the "foundation" or some other way.
Posted by: ornery | May 14, 2009 10:44 AM
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Posted by: John D | May 14, 2009 10:00 AM
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I agree with you that the banks should be allowed to pay the money back. They should not be forced to indefinitely concede a proprietary interest in their businesses to the federal government.
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However, I can also see the justice in what Ornery said about charging them interest for the (less than) trillions of TARP funds expended on their behalf. Banks and financial companies voluntarily accepted TARP money. No one forced it on them. The federal government had to go further into debt to provide TARP funds. That being the case, the TARP expenditures must have had a material impact on the cost of the federal debt service. If the banks and financial institutions don’t get charged some interest for the use of the money, then we, the taxpayers, get stuck paying the debt service on funds borrowed and expended for their benefit. That’s not right.
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An old maxim of jurisprudence states that, “[w]here one of two innocent persons must suffer by the act of a third, he, by whose negligence it happened, must be the sufferer.” (See California Civil Code, § 3543; North Dakota Civil Code, § 31-11-34; and Laughlin v. Calumet & Chicago Canal & Dock Co. et al., 65 F. 441, 445 (7th Cir. 1895).) I think all can agree that the negligence of the banks, rather than that of the American public, caused the financial demise that occasioned the TARP legislation. It is, therefore, only just that they pay the cost of their negligence.
Posted by: John W. | May 14, 2009 4:50 PM