Effort to portray Northern Trust as a victim

[ProSense]

Unfortunately, the banker also received $1.6 billion in TARP money. Now legislators such as John Kerry and Barney Frank are fuming "about another idiotic abuse of taxpayer money," to use Kerry's words. A letter from Congressional Democratic leaders to Northern Trust's CEO Frederick Waddell chastised him for "behavior demonstrates extraordinary levels of irresponsibility and arrogance." Even The New York Times' Maureen Dowd piled on the vitriol. Ow!

So what?

Irresponsibility? Arrogance? We could only be so lucky if the rest of the banking sector -- indeed, the rest of the federal government -- were as "irresponsible" as Northern Trust has been.

We're not talking about a bank that has borrowed tens of billions -- I'm looking at you Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Citigroup (NYSE: C), and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM). Unlike other insolvent operations, such as AIG, and de-facto insolvents such as Citi, Northern Trust actually made a profit in 2008, continuing a decades-long record of growing earnings. In fact, it increased its net income by a full 9% compared to 2007, despite the horrific economic environment. How many companies in the financial sector can you name that did likewise?

Confronted by Congressional scorn, Northern Trust protested its innocence, noting that the government asked banks to take funds whether they needed to the money or not. The Feds did so to alleviate bad banks' stigma of taking money from Uncle Sam, the lender of last resort. Besides, it's not like Northern is getting the money for free; it's already paying interest, and it's considering repaying the whole amount, as are JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. (NYSE: GS).

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Populist sentiment is aligned against these titans of finance, who took big risks with other people’s money and made bad investment decisions in search of a fast buck. Now we’re all paying for their short-sightedness.

On Feb. 11, chief executives of eight large financial institutions endured a whipping from Barney Frank’s House Financial Services Committee.

Shortly after came news that the Northern Trust Corp. of Chicago, a profitable bank that received $1.6 billion of government money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, had sponsored a golf outing for clients, spending millions of dollars -- and raising millions for charity -- to transport guests to Los Angeles and entertain them lavishly.

On Feb. 24, an outraged Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he planned to propose legislation that would “end the extravagant spending practices” of banks receiving TARP funds. His “TARP Taxpayer Protection and Corporate Responsibility Act” is intended to clamp down on such frivolous entertainment, which Kerry finds “unacceptable.”

“We must act to insure additional taxpayer funds are not wasted,” he said.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want government bureaucrats making business decisions -- even if Washington politicians are experts when it comes to wasteful spending.

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If they were profitable, why did they take the money? Also, the reports indicate they they were laying off 4% of their staff.

Summary: Profitable, takes TARP money, sponsors event, lays off staff??????