That’s the way the money goes…
Under the “your tax dollars at work” column (at least for the U.S. taxpayers; you folks in other countries might want to watch out for something similar)…
Spotting the “weasels” among the recipients of the multi-billion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of banks and financial institutions might be easier than ever imagined!
After receiving BILLIONS of dollars ($3 billion to Bank of New York Mellon, $25 billion to JPMorgan Chase, $3.5 billion to SunTrust Banks Inc., etc.) in bailout money, the largest banks in the U.S. say that they can’t track exactly how they are spending it, and some won’t even talk about it!
I know from personal contacts that banks track money to the nearest $0.00001. That is how they make so much money on interest by delaying transfers. 
Please don’t strain my credulity – IMHO (“in my humble opinion”) even banks don’t prevaricate as well as telecommunication companies, BOTH of which I served as customers in my high tech days. I don’t believe that the readers of this blog are stupid, either!
Most of the banks questioned about the fate of the money, including some of the recipients of the largest amounts, like Citibank and Bank of America, responded with generic public relations statements which explained that the money was being used to strengthen balance sheets (Where? On the “top line” under the “free money” category? ) and to continue to make loans to ease the credit crisis.
Please don’t get me wrong. I think that the consequences of bailing out the financial institutions will be much preferable to those that likely would have occurred without the bailout. However, I think that some accountability to taxpayers should be required, and I believe that the banks can likely account for every penny, if not every 1/1000 of a cent. (That is why they employ all of those accountants, after all. ) If a bank cannot track the money at that level, I would refuse do business with it (much as i refuse to do business with a particular bank that, in the past, had an ATM “meltdown” after not patching a SQL Server vulnerability with a patch that had been publicly available for six months).
We just need the correct governmental administration in place to require the accountability, that’s all.
We shall see what, if anything, happens after January. A move to require accountability would go a long way to gaining some taxpayer trust.
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
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