The Virtues of Character and Markets

A return to grassroots banking, "Let's Snooker the TARP". Joel Kotkin, Forbes:

Over the next few years, the emergence of banks like Spirit of Texas could prove the silver lining in the largely bungled Bush-Obama bail out of the big financial companies. Ironically, the attempt to shore up the mega-dinosaurs has revealed these mega-banks to be creatures of little brain and even less principle. They now seem more akin, as economist Simon Johnson has pointed out, to Third World crony capitalists than paragons of free enterprise.

In comparison, independent, non-TARP banks like the Spirit of Texas appear like paragons of traditional capitalist virtue and homespun values. For the time being, their rise will be most notable in "the zone of sanity," the vast range of territory between south Texas to the Great Plains, which largely resisted the housing and stock asset bubbles of the past decade.

Let the big banks shrink or fail. Let well-run banks prevail. They will fuel our economic comeback, lending to the small business job-creators. Back to basics, please America. The virtues of good character and free markets endure for good reason.

This is why the Tea Parties rose up.