A loan by any other name

Back last fall when the phony-baloney Bush Economy started to implode and everybody pretty much knew by then what was happening and about to happen, Bush pushed through a stim pack bill in which Treas Sec Henry Paulson could give the money to whoever he wanted without oversight or explanation. 'Member? The Bank of America was one of the first to line up for a Federal handout and collected some $15B which it was supposed to use for loans to keep credit loose and money flowing to people and businesses. They loaned it, alright.

To themselves: the bank's own executives and members of the BOD.

For at least seven years, the bank's quarterly insider lending never exceeded $300 million and was often less than half that. But by the end of 2008, it had jumped to $624 million.

The dollar gain was the biggest of any bank in the country, a 135 percent hike from a year earlier. The average for all banks with insider loans was 5.7 percent.

[From Fact-esque]