TARP Funds Siphoned to Local Political Campaign

I was extremely distressed to discover that my personal bank, SunTrust, donated $50,000 to start the high-powered political committee named Moving Hillsborough Forward (MHF). MHF’s mission is to promote passage of a 100% increase in our county sales tax for a light rail boondoggle giving us the distinction of having the highest overall state sales tax of any county in Florida. I recently learned that Regions bank gave $25,000 to the same political cause!

“So what” you may say. But realize SunTrust Bank received $4.85 billion dollars1 of TARP money in 2008 and Regions received $3.5 billion dollars2. Combined, they received 9.6% of all bank bailout funds. To date, 75% of all bank TARP money has been repaid3. According to the investigative journalist website Propublica,org, neither bailout recipient SunTrust nor Regions have begun to repay the principal on the debt they owe the US Treasury. How then could these banks afford to donate such a large amount of taxpayer-provided money to a controversial political cause that is advocating an increase in taxes rather than choose to reimburse the US taxpayer to whom they owe a gigantic debt? This amounts to transforming taxpayer money into a weapon against taxpayers!

Both banks have earned a D- from Weiss Ratings of the Weakest Banks In The US which implies they believe SunTrust and Regions are “vulnerable” to future financial difficulties or even failure, based on their analysis of their capital, asset quality, earnings, liquidity and other factors4.

SunTrust and Regions banks have a fiduciary responsibility to remedy the situation by immediately requesting that Moving Hillsborough Forward return their contributions and instead they should remit payment back to the US Treasury as a token start to paying off the debt they owe the US Taxpayer. It’s time that taxpayers let SunTrust and Regions banks know they are fed up with mismanagement of their money and demand that they rectify this immediately!


Karen Jaroch
Chairman of Tampa 912 Project

1 http://bailout.propublica.org/entities/457-suntrust
2 http://bailout.propublica.org/entities/406-regions-financial-corp
3 http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/36037/Banks+Pay+Back+75%25+of+TARP
4 http://www.weissratings.com/weakest-banks-and-thrifts-in-us

Welcome!

The Blaze of Tampa Bay is a news, information and opinion site brought to you by conservative bloggers in the Tampa Bay area.
Our goal is to post, report and analyze stories of interest on a wide range of topics of interest to residents of Tampa Bay from politics and culture to faith and family.
Have a question? Contact us at contact@theblazetampabay.com
Want to advertise? Contact advertise@theblazetampabay.com

Testing