Well, it seems old John Kerry is authoring a bill to ban banks that take TARP money from having lavish parties. It seems one bank inparticular did a lot of parties at the LA Open, even hiring Earth Wind and Fire for one of them.
On one hand, I guess if you are dumb enough to take govt. handouts then you should expect them to tell you how to spend it. On the other hand, I don’t think we need John Kerry telling private businesses how they are to entertain their best clients.
The duplicity of it is what bothers me. I guess wednesday is party night at the white house now. Here are details of a recent wednesday night party featuring the same Earth Wind and Fire.
I guess entertaining constituents, lobbyists, glad-handers and back-slappers on the taxpayers dime is ok in the white house but not ok in private business.
So Sen. Kerry, I hope you will decline any invitations to the wednesday night white house party because “clearly, this is no time to party.”
John Kerry was born an idiot, and he’s been losing ground ever since.
Unfortunately, there are so many politicians (on both sides of the aisle) that have no clue what it takes to be successful in business that his lunatic rantings probably make sense to a lot of them.
Ever done something painful that was so stupid it made you laugh? That’s how your post made me feel. Seems like DC is turning into a circus. For his party nights, it seems like Obama should be hiring clowns. Oh, wait…
Nothing more than public relations. Who’s to decide what is lavish and what is simply the appropriate amount to spend to bring in wealthy clients? Sen Kerry? I’d dare say he and his wife have been entertained at lavish parties on occassion. This is like the auto makers and their private jets. The cost of those jets was something like less than a tenth of a percent of the money given to the auto industry, but it just looked bad, so it was easy to latch on to.
There’s an old saying that you have to spend money to make money, and to a certain extent, that’s true in these cases as well. Banks need a certain amount of capital to come in from clients, and to some extent, they need to please those customers. The cost of these parties may be offset by the profits brought in from those clients.
regardless of whether or not the parties make financial sense for the banks in question, it is an easy area to score political points for Sen Kerry. Nobody ever lost ground by trying to look tough on “wastefull spending of taxpayer dollars.”
Quote: On one hand, I guess if you are dumb enough to take govt. handouts then you should expect them to tell you how to spend it.
Not all banks were “dumb”. One of the less publicized issues surrounding the bank bailouts is that a number of institutions wanted to decline but were not allowed to refuse the money from the government.