Dept. of Wait, What?

According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), American Express may seek $3.5 Billion in U.S. Aid. under TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). Apparently, even the big-spenders who carry AmEx cards have cut back on their spending and so the company is lining up with all of the other troubled banks and bank-like companies, awaiting a fresh infusion of gummint money. What's even sweeter is that they don't even have to worry about the competition getting more loot. The WSJ reports that, "Rivals Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., which operate processing
networks, aren't eligible for TARP[1] because they technically aren't
financial institutions."
These guys aren't even pretending to be capitalists any more.