Bailouts Are for Bullies

Asked why the federal government refuses to bailout CIT, a major small-business lender on the brink of bankruptcy, a Treasury Department flack told MSNBC last week that “even during periods of financial stress, we believe that there is a very high threshold for exceptional government assistance to individual companies.”

That didn’t prevent perennial overachievers like Bank of America, American Express, AIG, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, GM, Bank of New York Mellon, U.S. Bancorp, Northern Trust — wait, there’s still more — State Street, BB&T, and Capital One Financial from collectively receiving hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars last fall.

What gives? The Obama Administration keeps touting small business as the engine of private-sector job growth so crucial to the nation’s economic recovery. CIT — which received $2.3 billion in TARP funds in December — has a million clients with some $6 billion in credit lines, all for small and midsize businesses that are now tapping these funds for every penny. Maybe that’s peanuts compared to the $600 billion fall of the Lehman Brothers, which federal officials now openly regret not saving from bankruptcy — economists estimate the collapse cost the nation as many as two million jobs. That’s a lot of jobs, but nothing compared to the 120 million Americans who …