Rusty Cloutier, the president and CEO of MidSouth Bank, has been invited to testify about the Troubled Assets Relief Program before a Congressional subcommittee this afternoon. Cloutier is participating in a hearing before the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, along with Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and Robert W. Davenport, president of the National Development Council.
Cloutier, who is representing community bankers, says he hopes the hearings on TARP oversight clear up questions banks have about accepting the money. “I hope they can finally tell me just what they want community bankers to do,” Cloutier says. He also plans to push Congress to break up deteriorating major banks and sell off their operational units as a means of solving the current financial crisis. “Nobody is going to put fresh capital into the banking business when your major competitor is going to be continuously bailed out by the U.S. government with more and more money,” Cloutier says.
