Being able to count on a person or company thereof having
sufficient motivation to provide a self-defense is no feat, for self-interest
is a staple—perhaps the staple—in
human nature. It should be no surprise,
therefore, that after raking in $102 billion in subsidies, including lower
lending costs due to the general perception that the government would bail them
out, and repaying the TARP money, the biggest American banks were sufficiently
re-energized (i.e., self-motivated) to go on the offensive to protect their places on the perches under fire. Specifically, they planned
a lobbying campaign to fend off increasing Congressional calls to break up the
banks to solve the too big to fail problem (which includes the subsidy problem
that exacerbates the wider problem). There are problems with the lobbying
itself—problems caught in America’s blind-spot even as they subtly undermine
the body politic.
The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.
