Let me get this straight: We bail out a bank w/$3.5B of our money that bank buys a failed bank?

[nc4bo]

What the hell?!!! What kind of Friday news dump is this??!!

http://money.cnn.com/?cnn=yes

CNN breaking news:

Regional bank Fifth Third, which this week got $3.5 billion in bailout money, acquires Florida's failed Freedom Bank. More soon.

We got royally f'd with this deal and now the banks are throwing it in our faces.

[geckosfeet]

1. You act as if the Bernake et al were actually going supervise this thing.

Understand - this was a last minute transfer of wealth from us, to them. Plain and simple thievery with a bit of blackmail thrown in.

Expect nothing in return and be happy you can still sit at a computer and whine about it.

[AnOhioan]

2. The same thing happened with PNC and National City...

the Treasury Dept is determining which banks get saved and which ones get sacrificed.

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. No, you don't have it right.

They spent $700b of our money buying bank assets at twice their actual value.
They used 10% for executive bonuses.
They used 50% for dividends to the bank owners.
They only used 40% to buy other banks.

Yeah, we gave 'em the money hoping that they would loan it out and do bank-y kinds of stuff with it, but that was never *really* the administration's plan.

The administration should all be frog-marched. All of 'em.

[depakid]

4. The bank they acquired had already been taken over by the FDIC

and according to reports, this was the cheapest way to resolve the matter.

Would you rather have the taxpayers on the hook for more in this case?

[amdezurik]

5. it is also a tax dodge

they buy that failed bank and gets to write off it's losses on their taxes...