4 Mass. banks get $18m from US: Some recipients use funds to repay TARP, raising objections

The Boston Globe reports:

The US Treasury said yesterday that it is pumping $18 million into four small Massachusetts banks and taking shares in the financial companies as part of a controversial program to increase small business lending across the country.



The Obama administration says the Small Business Lending Fund will help boost the sluggish economy by providing relatively cheap capital to community banks to lend to small businesses to expand and hire. As with the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which bailed out banks during the financial crisis, the government is buying preferred stock in the banks in exchange for the capital infusion.

The program is controversial because many of the banks are using the money to repay the federal aid they received under TARP, with better terms. For example, Mercantile Capital Corp., parent of Mercantile Bank and Trust Co. in Boston, plans to use half the $7 million it will receive to repay TARP.

Government owning banks: that called socialism according to Karl Marx. What other industries does the Obama regime thinks federal taxpayers should own?