Dave,

You are asking for a complete news magazine.
I will answer the first and the last questions for you.

Why are the banks not lending after they have received the aid?

Banks are lending. Several banks have reported massive increases in new mortgage loans and refinancings.

The 23% decline in new loans is related to the economy and is in no way related to the TARP.

There are two issues.
1)
Congress , and most "talking heads" are not smart enough to understand the concept of "pushing on a string". Adding new money to the system is like pushing on a string. If nobody is pulling on the other end, it is not going to move. When business people are afraid and uncertain about what the future will bring, they don't want to spend the money they have, let alone borrow more.

Consumers are also afraid. They don't want to spend the money they have, let alone borrow more. That is the reason all the auto makers are in trouble. People are not afraid of GM or Chrysler entering banruptcy, If that was all they were afraid of, they would be buying, Fords, Toyotas, and Hondas. All those brands are down in the neighborhood of 30% in sales.

New loans are down because nobody wants to borrow, not because the lenders want to lend.

2) All that aid went to the Banks. It was a capital injection, it's purpose was to allow the banks to have enough confidence in each other to lend and transfer money to each other. And to increase their capacity to make loans.
But.
Banks are a small player in the lending industry in this country. The overwhelming dollar volume of loans to business in this country are either through the commercial paper, bond, or securitized loan markets.

Several very large bond issues have been funded in the past few weeks and the commercial paper markets are beginning to work much better.

Neither the bonds or the commercial paper markets could function before the TARP funds were injected because the people selling and the people buying those securities did not trust the banks.

EXAMPLE:
You are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. You want to raise 500,000,000 by selling bonds. To sell the bonds, The buyers have to pay 500,000,000 to the investment bank that is selling them and your proceeds will be deposited in a bank of your choice. If you are afraid that none of the big banks are safe, where would you put your $500,000,000. You could ? put put 100,000 in each of 5,000 banks. How would you like that? More likely that you would just wait.

Now let me ask you a question.
Assuming that you have a good job, you are making ends meet and are current on your mortgage but your company has already had some layoffs and you personally know five or six people that have already been laid off. This puts you in the same boat as 85% of all Americans.

Even if you needed a new car. Say your car is still reliable but getting a little tired. Would you go buy a new car this weekend?

The Administration is upset about the perception that banks are not lending because it points out two things.

1) They are NOT in control.

2) Even the general public who are generally very uninformed about the economy and financial issues have realized that they are not in control of the situation and that this massive shotgun spending on things that for the most part will not create jobs is not going to help.

3) Their plan will eventually work but as usual, they are fighting the symptom and not the cause of the problem. They are trying to put out a fire by spraying water on the top of the flames instead of the wood that is burning.
Source(s):
Financial News, Many sources.
McDonald's, I go there for breakfast every morning. I hear people of all ages and all races talking about the stupidity of the stimulus plan.
Example - one group of bottled water delivery people included two white guys, two African Americans, One Hispanic guy and one Asian woman. ( That is about as representative as you can get in a small group.) They were all talking about the stimulus package and how stupid it was and they were angry about it because they didn't want to pay to bail out some executive who bought a million dollar home and lost his job.

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