Our leading financial institutions announced that they had actually made a profit in the year's first quarter through the creative manipulation of rules and regulations, lobbied Congress to preserve their ability to raise credit card interest rates just for the heck of it and opposed the administration's plan for restructuring Chrysler, which would save some jobs and honor pension obligations, in the hope that they can redeem the company's bonds at a higher level than they're trading at just now. And, to round out the picture, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that lending at the 19 largest TARP recipients was 23 percent lower in February -- by which time these banks had received hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds intended to enable them to lend more -- than it had been in October, before the floodgates of tax dollars had been fully opened.
In September, 2009 Atlantic Monthly named 
