Banks Were Pressured to Take TARP Funds: CEO

Natalie Erlich
CNBC
Thursday, September 3, 2009

Banks were pressured to take government bailout funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program whether they wanted to or not, said Bill Cooper, the chairman and CEO of TCF Financial.

“I wouldn’t like to use the word ‘threat,’ but what they said was that they were going to give this money only to the strong banks,” he said. “And if you didn’t take the money, you’d be recognized as a weak bank.”

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“The public anger at this is amazing,” he said. “When I have breakfast in the morning, people walk up to me and shake my hand for paying that money off. They really are angry about this whole process.”

The current system takes out capital from healthy banks to bail out unhealthy institutions, he said.

Full story here.