Everything you need to know about the Banking Crisis

Banks are in dire straights. The administration and congress said that it was so bad, that there had to be a $700 Billion bailout, administered by nameless bureaucrats, accountable to nobody RIGHT NOW OR WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!1!

Well, let's look at a bank. East Bridgewater Savings Bank is a local bank in Massachusetts. Is it in dire straights?

Bad or delinquent loans? Zero. Foreclosures? None. Money set aside in 2008 for anticipated loan losses? Nothing. ... The bank even squeaked out a profit of $87,000. And its Tier 1 risk-based capital ratio was 31.6 percent, or more than three times higher than many community banks in Massachusetts. “We’re paranoid about credit quality,” Petrucelli said. The 62-year-old chief executive has run the bank since 1992.

Well, no. Has it asked for bailout funds? No. You'd think they'd get a medal.

So what did they get?

Yet the FDIC has turned up the heat on Petrucelli's bank, giving it an apparently rare "needs to improve rating," for not making more risky loans under the Community Reinvestment Act. Here is how the FDIC puts it: “There are no apparent financial or legal impediments that would limit the bank’s ability to help meet the credit needs of its assessment area. The FDIC examiners also faulted East Bridgewater "for not advertising and marketing its loan products enough. The bank, which does not have a Web site, offers fixed-rate mortgages."

The Fed.Gov nails them for not lending to people who can't repay the loans, and not going out of business while doing it.

Sigh.

Irony is dead, it seems. The same idiots who created laws that have bankrupted the entire financial sector have created a machine that - in the midst of the grazed-to-the-soil, barren public common that used to be the banking sector - homes in on the one small tuft of green left in sight.

This simply won't change, because as I pointed out a while ago, Congress doesn't give a fig for you and me. The care about the political machine, about patronage, about the big political donors. About payola: earmarks for donations.

Throw them all out. Every man Jack (and woman Jill).

Reprinted here is what I proposed would be the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:

Section 1. No person shall be elected to the House of Representatives more than thrice, and no person who has held the office of Representative, or acted as Representative, for more than one year of a term to which some other person was elected Representative shall be elected to House of Representatives more than twice. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of Representative when this article becomes operative, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of Representative, or acting as Representative, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of Representative or acting as Representative during the remainder of such term.

Section 2. No person shall be elected to the Senate more than once, and no person who has held the office of Senator, or acted as Senator, for more than three years of a term to which some other person was elected Senator shall be elected to Senate. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of Senator when this article becomes operative, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of Senator, or acting as Senator, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of Senator or acting as Senator during the remainder of such term.

Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

No extra charge, folks, it's all part of the service.