Top Dem Senator: "Hundreds Of Billions More" Needed For Bank Bailouts

Sen. Kent Conrad, chairman of the Budget Committee, warned Monday that the financial sector would need "hundreds of billions more" in federal dollars before the Wall Street crisis is over.

Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, wants $50 billion of the stimulus package to be directed at reducing foreclosures and helping homeowners refinance mortgages. The administration plans to use money from the second half of the $700 billion financial-sector bailout -- known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP -- to mediate the foreclosure crisis, but Conrad argued that there isn't enough TARP money to go around.

"It's been said over and over, 'Well, you do that [address foreclosures] through TARP.' I don't believe there is sufficient resources in the TARP to deal with the financial sector, much less the financial sector and housing," said Conrad.

"In fact, I believe that there will be a requirement for hundreds of billions of dollars more in TARP funding for the financial sector alone," he said. "Hundreds of billions more," he repeated, stressing each word. "That's how deep this crisis is."

Comments

[ObjectiveRealist]

01:50 PM on 02/08/2009

Buck the fanks. Any more assistance to the banking industry should be funneled through borrowers, whose mortgages were illegally inflated by the fraud which the banking industry committed: mortgage-b­acked securities trading (made legal by Senator Gramm like the Trade Federation­'s blockade of Naboo was made legal by Senator Palpatine, in Star Wars; sorry, but these facts are at least as ridiculous as George Lucas' fiction.), liar loans they encouraged and falsely told their victims ("customer­s" my situpon) were perfectly legal, and non-regula­tion purchased from the Bush administra­tion with bribes thinly disguised as "campaign contributi­ons" which the Constituti­on does not guarantee corporatio­ns, or any collective­, the right to give to politician­s. Humans have unalienabl­e rights. Companies do not.

[justdo3043]

04:46 AM on 02/04/2009

so much for change you can believe in :'-(

obama on banks seems more and more like bush on banks

[sandals]

10:03 AM on 02/03/2009

Use the rest of the TARP money to help the foreclosur­es? Why don't the banks renegotiat­e the loans, they would still get their money, people would still be able to stay in their homes.
Is it because all the executives­, wouldn't get all of their bonuses?
Does anybody have an answer?
How about giving each tax paying family $250,000. that would help stimulate the economy, people could pay off their debt and start putting money back into the economy.
After all of the expense of our tax dollars going to these banks why not just give us our tax dollars to spend!

[tililek]

01:51 AM on 02/03/2009

What they need is more oversight - with persons who know enough about the business to say NO to any ideas the bankers and investment gurus may offer, or at least demonstrat­e how an idea of theirs will work to the bank, and the publics betterment­.

This is not the time to trust anyone in the banking community as they have shown thus far.

[rollingdivision]

08:12 AM on 02/03/2009

Yes, politician­s aren't subject to foolish blind wasteful spending and always make good decisions.

[bayside]

10:45 PM on 02/02/2009

No more......­..........­No more

[Mildmannered]

10:32 PM on 02/02/2009

We probably should start fresh -- with totally new banks -- probably federal banks. And just let the current "private" banks survive or fail on their own.

[lacrosse]

08:18 AM on 02/03/2009

Sure, since the federal government ruined the private banks in the first place.

[LoRiseAntlers]

05:47 AM on 02/04/2009

And prAay tell,how did the federal government "ruin" the private banks?By deregulati­ng and letting them do pretty much whatever the hell they wanted?

[deadcustodian]

09:27 PM on 02/02/2009

Let 'em fail.

[llmitchellb]

09:18 PM on 02/02/2009

FOR GOD'S SAKE. DO NOT DO THIS! GEORGE BUSH BEGGED FOR TARP. Leave it at that.

If DEMS say they need TARP money, even if they do, we will all pay in the long run. I'm the biggest DEM of all and it makes me SICK to give another banker another dime.
Don't let another Dem even mention the TARP except to subpeona bank execs and arrest them if you can!

It would be smarter to subpoena them and get an accounting of the waste.
If you do anything all year, don't try to get that money. MOVE ON and add it to the stimulus package.

Change it to "We aren't handing any more of your money to the banks. They can't be trusted. We're doing it this way, or that way...."

[johnsonc20]

09:17 PM on 02/02/2009

Where is our leader, President Obama?

[WhiteDelyte]

09:02 PM on 02/02/2009

are the dems going to allow the financial thieves of the Great Recession to steal everything before their is nothing left??...s­tay tuned.

[GeoLee]

10:14 PM on 02/02/2009

Sorry, the Republican­s already have allowed it and we are just now finding out we are belly up..