Usurious

Webster defines usury as "an unconscionable or exorbitant rate or amount of interest ; specifically : interest in excess of a legal rate charged to a borrower for the use of money." After centuries of practice by loan sharks to fleece the working poor around the world, each of our united states enacted laws regulating limits on interest charged for loans. But then, 30 years ago, the United States Supreme Court, in its infinitesimal wisdom, said what the heck, let the good times roll, at least for federally chartrered banks and their credit card loan sharks.

Now as our middle class is drowning in infinite debt, the President is trying to confront the banks on this critical issue. “The days of any time, any reason rate hikes and late fee traps have to end,” Mr. Obama told the bankers. Unfortunately, Larry Summers fell asleep in that meeting.

Questions

Well, now the panel that Congress created to oversee TARP is questioning Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for the first time this Tuesday morning, and Richard H. Neiman has asked all of us to submit our own questions for him to ask Geithner, if he can just get them all in. Check it out.

Black

Is Timothy Geithner going to sandbag Obama and his good intentions to straighten out our economy from the decider's flaccid legacy of deregulation and Wall Street shell games?

From liar’s loans to mortgage-backed securities to AIG’s credit default swaps, the "masters of the universe" were given free rein under Bush’s languid reign to trash our cash and pile their own personal fortunes on towers of babble under faulty pretenses. And then Henry Paulson and a lot of the same characters who did all this have been asked to fix it. Doesn’t that sound a little bit like asking the nuts to run the nuthouse?

"For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall Street have reminded us that ‘The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One,’" Bill Moyers opened his Journal tonight. "In fact, the man you're about to meet wrote a book with just that title," he continued as he introduced William K. Black. "It was based upon his experience as a tough regulator during one of the darkest chapters in our financial history: the savings and loan scandal in the late 1980s."

And then Black revealed his professional and incredulous assessment of the fine mess we’re in now and how we should get out of it:

So stop that current system. We're hiding the losses, instead of trying to find out the real losses. Stop that, because you need good information to make good decisions, right? Follow what works instead of what's failed. Start appointing people who have records of success, instead of records of failure. That would be another nice place to start. There are lots of things we can do. Even today, as late as it is. Even though they've had a terrible start to the administration. They could change, and they could change within weeks. And by the way, the folks who are the better regulators, they paid their taxes. So, you can get them through the vetting process a lot quicker.

Black is right, of course. It’s worth reading his remarks here if you haven’t already seen the interview. And keep your eye on Geithner. He talks fast.

C-note

Where’s the money, honey? That seems to be the question of the hour as Obama chokes American auto makers while keeping Wall Street and the banks on a nice long leash.

“The president is telling Detroit to shape up or die while at the same time politely asking Wall Street, whose recklessness and greed caused this economic crisis, if it would be so kind as to accept another heaping helping of taxpayer funds,” Eugene Robinson observes.

And, of course, he’s not alone in this chorus.

“Wall Street executives were hosted at the White House for a cheery photo op and reassurance that they will be getting hundreds of billions more in no-strings-attached bailout cash,” writes Daivd Sirota. “Then this week, Obama demanded the firing of GM's CEO, and said he may withhold the mere $30 billion or so that the automakers are requesting.”

What’s with this double standard? The answer may be as simple as one makes cars, an actual product, while the other makes money. And, after all, you need one to drive the other. But which one drives the other? People are getting confused about which C-note they're hearing – capitalism, communism, corporatism or cronyism. In the end, though, it’s a crotch for a cash crunch, which leads to cynicism.