Today’s front page of the Wall Street Journal features an article [$] on the failure of banks to increase their lending, as Congress had hoped that they would when the funds were allocated. The highlight, though, a choice quote from zee Germans:

On Sunday, Franz Müntefering, chairman of Germany’s Social Democrats, said in an interview with a German newspaper that “most of the bankers are competent and responsible, but there are also some beatniks, pyromaniacs and gangsters.”

But back to the point of the article: none of the banks that received the TARP funding — funding operating under the provision that, “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” — are not being properly allocated. Now, politicians have resorted to their natural talent of complaining, in this case that the banks that got these non-reviewable funds are not spending in the way that they wanted it to be spent.

To paraphrase Walter Sobchak (and to turn him on his head), this is what happens when you bend over for an industry. The money’s gone, and is not coming back. You got had, son.

Matt Yglesias, on the new dynamics in the House of Representatives:

Instead, Yglesias says, the Senate is far more important. But if he thinks that the House debate won’t play a role, he’s sorely mistaken. The Democratic Party can try to force an un-compromised agenda through the House, and succeed, but it’s not as though the GOP Senators have their coverage of those debates blacked out. Once the battle lines are drawn in the House, and Cantor can afford to focus solely on principles without having to worry about maneuvering, the compromising work in the Senate will be much harder for the Democrats. In fact, what Cantor thinks matters more now, when 2010 is the main issue for the House GOP, than it did when he was helping to twist arms for votes.

On a broader scale, it’s incredible how little time it took for the arrogance of the new power to establish itself. Much of the failure of the Bush administration can be pinpointed at the callous, uncompromising manner in with the GOP dealt with the out-of-power Democrats during it’s two-branch dominance. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and greater power corrupts greatly. Now, one might say that Obama has a better “temperament” for dealing with the opposition, an unquantified stance that I’ll accept for the sake of argument. This will ultimately mean that the measures forced through will be far more moderate in their scale than Bush’s — making the perceived “Blue Dog” advantage Yglesias cites irrelevant. The progressive gains will occur over a greater period of time, perhaps, but will also be less sweeping in scope.

Incidentally, what are the numbers of new Democrats v. numbers of new “Blue Dogs” in the House?