Trust Us (not grim reality)

This time they were somewhat more sensitively discreet; no limousines dropping the bank hierarchy off for their hearing in the House of Representatives on this more recent occasion of sober reality and muffled mea culpas. The chief executives of Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo sat meekly, taking their chiding with due care to optics.

They were, they swore, committed to paying back all those taxpayer-funded billions in bailout money, as soon as they possibly could. You do believe them, don't you? That funding most certainly did not find its way into their personal, sagging pockets; perish that ugly thought. Lines of credit were available to their good customers, certainly that's so; customers need but line up for the credit, and where are they? Doubtless hiding whatever cash is available to them in piggy banks, under mattresses.

"It is abundantly clear that we are here amidst broad public anger at our industry" understated Goldman Sachs's Lloyd Blankfein, allowing as how Wall Street "lost sight of its larger public obligations". These CEOs are truly apologetic for the misunderstandings, but it must be understood that they have been victims of the markets. And they've taken steps to sacrifice some of their comforts. Did they not, after all, travel to Washington by train rather than corporate jet?

Oh yes, that sordid story of the Citigroup jet as an instance of how the banks have chosen to use the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program funding still rankles. No less, actually than Merrill Lynch's decision - while it was in the throes of billions of dollars in losses - to render $1-million to each of approximately seven hundred employees - after nine banks received $125-billion of U.S. Treasury injections.

The banks' use of those funds to plump up their balance sheets, to buy up rivals at bargain-basement prices instead of re-opening credit lines to businesses and consumers did not raise their profiles meaningfully, positively, in the jaundiced opinion of irate lawmakers. Nor did the well-publicized corporate retreats to luxury hotels in Las Vegas and elsewhere.

All the while forcing higher credit card interest rates on already-debt-ridden consumers. Warned one lawmaker, "You will be publicly pilloried". He's right, and along with them the administration and its various governing bodies which decided not to practise due diligence and follow the trail of the funding to ensure it matched the purpose for which it was meant.

And here we always felt it was out-to-pasture politicians who had the lock on handsomely provisioning their financial larder. It is, after all, a free market capitalist society isn't it? A phenomenon we in the West identify as ethical malfeasance - corruption in other words - practised elsewhere.