TARP Accountability: Bankers Say 'What, Me Sorry?'

There should be lots of grandstanding, fireworks and acrimony Wednesday at the House Financial Services Committee hearing on TARP Accountability -- and that's just among the politicians. Wait until they get their hooks into the assembled bank CEOs. Anyway, you'll be able to watch it all here live starting at 10am EST.

The names of the eight bank CEOs in attendance follow -- hey, one more CEO and we would have Tolkien's nine Nazgûl (which would explain much) -- along with links to their pre-released prepared remarks:

• Mr. Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Goldman Sachs & Co. (GS)
• Mr. James Dimon, Chief Executive Officer, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)
• Mr. Robert P. Kelly, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bank of New York Mellon (BK)
• Mr. Ken Lewis, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bank of America (BAC)
• Mr. Ronald E. Logue, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, State Street Corporation (STT)
• Mr. John J. Mack, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Morgan Stanley (MS)
• Mr. Vikram Pandit, Chief Executive Officer, Citigroup (C)
• Mr. John Stumpf, President and Chief Executive Officer, Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC)

In scanning the 9,726 words of bank CEO blather there was, as always, no sign of "sorry", "we f**ked up", "mistake", "error" or even "whoops" as far as the eye can read. Check the following, by way of example:

Finally, and you knew this was coming, here is a tag cloud of the most-used words in the aggregated remarks from the assembled bank/broker CEOs:

Comments

[CM in MA:]

TARP means you never have to say you're sorry. Ought to be set to music.

Feb 11 09:58 AM

[Roberm73:]

Hey they road the train in from NY. They understands the corparte jets would just be a bad show. Idiots. Fire them all and start over.

Feb 11 09:58 AM

[Crank Monkey:]

Being a banker means never having to say you're sorry.

Feb 11 09:59 AM

[Tony Petroski:]

I remember a day when the Congress hauled up communists to testify against each other instead of the daily parade of businessmen to grovel before them. These hearings have a Soviet feel to them--the attempt to find and blame "wreckers." Unlike the Soviets or the modern-day Chinese, these men are safe from execution--for now.

Feb 11 10:30 AM

[D. McHattie:]

I don't think every one of these guys is guilty. My understanding is that BK is and always was strong and only accepted the TARP money because they were given no choice - they had no need for the TARP money.

Perhaps I am just drinking the kool-aid but that was the understanding that I had.

Feb 11 10:43 AM

[William Cowie:]

Almost all the CEO's were saying their institutions were quite healthy, thank you very much.

Well, then, can we have our money back?

Feb 11 10:49 AM

[Jake Berzon:]

A nice and colorful obfuscation cloud - I love it!

Feb 11 11:08 AM

[The Madrigal:]

Hold on one second. Now, yes, bankers gave too many loans to people that didn't deserve them. But remember that for every sale there is a purchase. I was this close to buying a home about 6 years ago but didn't in fear of a pending bubble. (When you work in the finance industry as I do, and people who have nothing to do with the industry are vehemently telling you how badly you need to invest in something despite your experience in such matters - it's probably a bubble.) I'm just saying that great portions of our global society are to blame for this - not just 20 people in New York City. The lessons to be learned here by every member of society are 1) do your homework before you sign any dotted line and 2) if you give people room to do anything they want (e.g. lack of regulation and low credit standards), they'll compete with each other to the point of everyone's destruction (a prisoner's dillema). This crisis is a game theorist's dream come true (provided he has a job). People are quite good at making decisions that benefit themselves, but very bad at calculating what effects the decision will have on society as a whole and therefore themselves (e.g. industrialization vs. global warming, cold war vs. Armageddon, etc.) Therefore, people can make very rational decisions at the micro level that on end up being extremely irrational at the macro level. It's about time that humanity gets a grip with its limits and fallability. I'm just saying, in additon to the CEOs, every person who bought a house they couldn't afford or a security they didn't understand, also needs to apologize to the world right now.

Feb 11 11:51 AM

[k9s-4-k8:]

I believe there is blame to go around from the bankers, to mortgage companies, to rating agencies, to Fannie and Freddie, to the Clinton Administration, to the Congress, to home buyers, to European banking, to Bush, to the SEC.
Today, we have one guilty party asking another guilty party to confess up. Being that Congress specifically will use any statement as fodder to support their own denial of any responsibility, why should bankers help Congress mislead?

Feb 11 03:46 PM

[k9s-4-k8:]

I forgot to add the Federal Reserve to my list of who to blame.

Feb 11 03:47 PM

[socphd71:]

If some of the most prominent bankers, mortgage brokers, appraisers, quants, etc. etc. had been arrested as terrorists or racketeers, the rest of them might be more apologetic. They might even be inclined to clean up their mess.

Feb 11 07:48 PM

[User 330860:]

They don't say they are sorry, they hoard the cash for themselves and their cronies ala bonuses and then they layoff thousands of employees. Why does somone need a $10M bonus. That could be 100 people making $100k/year or 1000 people at $50k. What these greed idiots are doing is formenting soical unrest. That's right, at some point, people are going to get fed up with these blood suckers. They are cutting off contracts on small buisnesses, laying off thousands, and still taking a bonus.

I love the Harvard business professor on NBC who said "They have to receive bonuses otherwise these companies will not hold onto good talent". So this is good talent? I'd hate to see what bad talent does.

Feb 12 08:41 AM