The Treasury Department Forced Healthy Banks to Give up Control to the Government

Under the Freedom of Information Act, Judicial Watch was able to obtain an internal memo from the Treasury Department and what we have discovered in this document is downright disturbing.

According to the memo, last October Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ordered nine banks that were not troubled to surrender ownership interests to the government or face regulations that would force them into government ownership. In other words the government forced these banks which were not in peril to succumb to government control or the government would wrestle control away from them.

The talking points indicate that Paulson then told the nine bank CEOs that the government was going to use $250 billion of the $700 billion approved by Congress to shore up the financial industry through the “Troubled Asset Relief Program” (TARP) to buy stock in banks all across the country and that the nine banks these CEOs represented had no choice but to allow the government to buy their stock–or else.

This was one of President Bush’s last acts as president and when you read something as frightening as the government forcing nine banks to give in and accept government control or else, is it any wonder that those who supported President Bush right up to the end, like myself, soured on him just before he left office?

Now our current president is following President Bush’s lead and taking it to another level. The government is buying up once private industries such as GM, AIG, and the like; soon the health-care industry will follow. More and more companies and industries are being taken over by the government and this has to stop now!

We are watching the United States being Europeanized right in front of our eyes and we are helpless to stop it.