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February 4, 2009
The Facts
The New York Times reported today that Wells Fargo abruptly canceled a very expensive 12-day junket to a Las Vegas casino for employees. The party was canceled only after many Capital Hill lawmakers expressed their outrage over the decision. Earlier, Wells Fargo tried to defend the expensive self-indulging party when the Associated Press reported on it.
My View
As I pointed out in this post, Wells Fargo has already received $25 billion in TARP money, and will likely go back to the taxpayer-funded trough for more. Yet they don’t seem to see anything wrong with this repulsive action. But I guess they think because they have defenders out there like Erin Burnett of CNBC “explaining” to us “idiots” how there are “different pots of money” that banks such as Well Fargo can “draw” from, all they, Wells Fargo, have to do is say “oh, that’s not from the taxpayer money pot, so it’s really ok”.
The real problem with WF and others is described in the many editorials over the past few months addressing this very kind of behavior. And that is that ‘Wall Street just doesn’t get it yet; that kind of behavior will no longer be acceptable, & was never really ok. They need to just count their pass blessings, go enjoy their ill-gotten riches and accept that that era is over. The American people are not going to put up with it any longer‘.
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[...] for the $350 billion in TARP funds, other than financial institution consolidations and a couple of cancelled junkets and perqs, like Citigroup’s new jet. Loans are still not flowing, jobs are still being lost, [...]