A decade or so ago, some states gave welfare recipients food stamp debit cards. Welfare mothers could use them to buy groceries with plastic, just like virtually everybody else in the check out line. Plastic made accounting easier for clerks because the debit cards failed to function for excluded items like cigarettes and alcohol.
That’s what America needs for Wall Street. When bankers get money from the $700 billion bailout called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), they should receive it on plastic. A TARP debit card would restrict bankers’ spending. TARP plastic would fail to function if bankers tried to use it for excluded items like $18 billion in year-end bonuses, private French-manufactured jets and $35,000 inoperative toilets.
