More and Growing Group of TARP Deadbeats

from WSJ:

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The list of TARP deadbeats continued to climb over the past few months, with 115 banks skipping dividend payments on $3.6 billion worth of borrowings from the U.S. Treasury Department.
The number has climbed from 91 payment deferrals in the previous Treasury report on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in May, and 74 deferrals in the report in February. According to an analysis by SNL Financial, 15 companies have skipped payments five times while seven have deferred on six occasions. After half a dozen delinquencies, the Treasury holds the right to elect two directors to a bank's board, as it did with American International Group (AIG) last spring.

"Bad Bank" Program May Be Put On Hold

from WSJ:
A government program designed to rid banks of bad loans, part of a broader effort once viewed as central to tackling the financial crisis, is stalling and may soon be put on hold, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Legacy Loans Program, being crafted by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., is part of the $1 trillion Public Private Investment Program the Obama administration announced in March as a way to encourage banks to sell securities and loans weighing on their balance sheets to willing investors.

Opinions Mixed in Davos on "Bad Bank"

From Bloomberg:

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz said any decision by President Barack Obama to establish a so-called bad bank to rid financial companies of toxic assets risks swelling the national debt.
Obama’s administration is moving closer to buying the illiquid assets currently clogging bank’s balance sheets and preventing them from boosting lending, people familiar with the matter said this week...
Whether a bad bank would accelerate an end to the financial crisis split delegates attending the Davos talks. JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said such an operation would help if “executed well.” Billionaire investor George Soros said in an interview that “it’s not the measure that would turn the situation around and enable banks to lend.”

Here is the full story.

It should be noted that Dimon's bank would benefit from being able to rid itself of toxic assets by disposing them through the bad bank. I suppose, then, that so would Dimon.