Obama has done "Nothing", PT.3

This one is called:

"Cleaning up after the Bush Bank Bailout"

I was never convinced of the necessity of Bush's Bank Bailout, but as Vice President Joe Biden stated, "Instead of being in the middle of a depression, we are talking about coming out of a recession."

I see the bailout as part of the strategic vision of Republican strategists to maintain their relevance. The largest transfer of wealth to the wealthiest of Americans ever. They saddled the next administration with debt beyond what most of us could even comprehend which has severely limited the Obama administration from achieving their own initiatives as they try to clean up the mess that was left.

Lastly, the best part of their strategy is in play now, as they have spent the last several months painting the Democrats as the ones responsible for the bailouts and uncontrollable federal spending. Brilliant strategy and it has worked masterfully.

In steps the Pay Czar, one of Obama's much maligned "czars" (a conservative media phenomenomem that is dismantled here on http://factcheck.org/). When Obama took office he mandated some structure be put around the reckless management of the billions of funds released by the Bush Administration that was largely (if not completely) unaccounted for.

The Pay Czar is delivering a payback in his latest move to deny salary or bonus from Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis. Lewis was set to receive millions in salary and bonuses while his company posted $2.24B in losses for the 3Q after accepting $45 billion dollars from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) (a.k.a Bush Bank Bailout).


Kenneth Feinberg, is the U.S. Treasury Department's special master for compensation and is scrutinizing pay packages at bailed-out banks. In fact Lewis will pay back about $1 million he has received so far out of a $1.5 million annual salary. Lewis will be the first of many CEO’s to have their pay packages scrutinized which under the Bush administration had little to no accountability for the funds they had received.