Misuse Of Bailout Money, Bank Bailout | featured news

Maxine Waters helped set up a meeting in which the chief executive of a bank with financial ties to her family asked for special bailout funds, officials said.

Bernanke accuses company of exploiting gaps in the system, says government 'had no choice' on bailout.

The New York Attorney General's office has subpoenaed Bank of America to submit a list of employees who got bonuses and the amounts that the employees received, a spokesman for the New York Attorney General said on Thursday.

The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday put more pressure on banks to cut dividends as conditions deteriorate, and said it would discourage the funding of such payouts with federal rescue money.

A provision buried in the stimulus bill would impose restrictions on executive bonuses at companies reaping bailout money.

Wall Street bankers, with their $18 billion in bonuses, private jets and gaudy conferences, are causing headaches for the GOP.

President Obama has proposed capping compensation for executives at banks that take taxpayer bailout money at $500,000. Republicans hate the idea, which puts them uncomfortably on the side of people currently about as popular as child-porn producers and subprime mortgage brokers.

Lawmakers and consumer groups skewered the San Francisco bank, which got a $25-billion infusion from the government, after they heard about the event to fete top mortgage salespeople.

Cries for post-bailout accountability resounded at the biggest banks Tuesday as Citigroup Inc. issued a 43-page defense of its lending, a consumer group lashed Bank of America Corp. for throwing a $10-million Super Bowl bash, and Wells Fargo & Co.

At banks that are receiving federal bailout money nearly nine out of every 10 of the most senior executives from 2006 are still on the job, according to an Associated Press analysis of  documents.