According to the Huffington Post, banks that were quick to line up for the government bailouts have been busy spending a portion of the bailout funds on lobbying Congress.

Twenty-five top recipients of government bailout funds spent more than $71 million on lobbying the federal government in the year since they were rescued, an extensive review of lobbying records by the Huffington Post reveals.

A year after taxpayers forked over $700 billion to help rescue the biggest names in banking, insurance and automotive industry, those same institutions are using portions of the cash to influence legislation with a direct impact on taxpayers.

This is absolutely disgusting.  It seems like the have no representation in Washington anymore and the only way to get attention is to have lobbyists.  Now that we’ve saved these institutions from the brink of destruction, they’ve turned around and are using that money to get laws passed that are more favorable to them.

Does anyone think that these institutions want laws that restrict their activities?  Of course not!  They are using the taxpayer money received from the bailouts to pass laws that will enable them to create another bubble.

There seems to be some outrage today at the news that Goldman Sachs has received 200 doses of the vaccine for H1N1 while so many high risk people cannot get it.  In fact, Lennox, a hospital in Manhattan, only received 200 doses.  The difference is that Goldman Sachs is full of 1%’ers with the best health care while Lennox is full of at-risk sick people.

Fannie Mae is finally getting around to something that should have been done long ago.  Now, rather than booting someone that didn’t pay their mortgage out onto the streets, Fannie Mae has a new leasing program in place.

The Dow had a 156-rally and then lost it yesterday.  Gold surged to $1,092.20 per ounce!

Cities are setting up programs to help the “un-banked” — folks without bank accounts.

Legislators are looking to fix the massive $36 billion dollar NSF / Overdraft fee problem.