First you guys complain that the taxpayers are getting screwed with the bailouts and will never be made whole. Now you're complaining because the beneficiaries of the bailouts are apparently going to be held to financial account. You're all just angry infants, aren't you, and you're going to rage whether you get your plush toy or not.
Wrong. Why not just do a tax similar to what the UK did to those insane bonuses make it 50% to firms that received TARP. Now Obama is punishing companies who did not pay out extreme bonuses and did not recive any TARP Sounds like punishing folks who did the right things because of the ones who screwed up. I think TARP should never have happened to begin with. Now its official, to big to bail out and everyone gets screwed.
All taxes are paid by the consumer. Companies do not pay taxes they only transfer them to their customers. Bend over and spread'em.
President's big-bank fee saves online traders from a wider financial-transaction tax President Obamaâs big-bank fee is covered in the leading media today, including New York Times and Wall Street Journal. The President is scheduled to unveil it soon this morning. This bank fee (tax/levy/insurance) has been in the making a while and it will be hard for the targets to stop it. They can't make sausage deals with some Congressmen as it's going to be in the presidentâs budget. The public on both the left and right have great populist anger against TARP bailouts and Wall Street. The Financial Crisis Commission is taking Wall Street to the woodshed and this is softening up the target and empowering the taxman. Wall Street made windfall type profits during the financial crisis recovery with excessively low interest rates from the Federal Reserve, so they had a license to print profits with a crisis-large yield curve. The public views Wall Street as Crisis-Profiteers, like War Profiteers, especially witnessing what they view as obscene levels of bonuses during this fragile Main Street recovery. So the governments proposed bank fee of 1.5 percent assessed on big banks non-tier 1 asset positions (the riskier ones) is a new big-bank-only transaction tax. The government promised (so far with the leaks) that this new bank tax can't be easily and directly passed on to consumers, which includes investors of all types including online traders. Let's get more details today and in the Presidentâs budget, and listen to complaints from the banks which may bring to light valid unintended consequences. If this big bank fee/tax is the mechanism for paying back remaining losses in TARP, that undermines the stated basis for Congressional bills calling for a wider financial-transaction tax. For all proponents of a financial-transaction tax that donât give up their fight, the obvious rebuttal is to say this big-bank fee is a financial-transaction tax on risky too-big-to fail positions. Plus, itâs the only way to protect Main Street consumers and investors â the wrongful targets â from a wider and unfair financial-transaction tax. End of story, the proponents got their tax and why try to extend it to unintended targets, the little guy? Does this new bank fee mean online traders are safe from further realistic attack? It's way too early to fly the âMission Accomplishedâ banner. Hardcore proponents like economist Dean Baker (still out to sell his upcoming book on the subject) won't give up on a financial-transaction tax. But, with this new big-bank fee, the administration is taking a wider financial-transaction tax off the table in the U.S. for the foreseeable future. It will be hard to pass a wider financial-transaction tax in any major financial center unless all leading centers cooperate to enact it. With the U.S. opting out for now â and following what Secretary Geithner said the U.S. would not support - global enactment in my opinion has even less of a chance of passage than a global climate control treaty over the next few years. Sorry that our apparently being spared from a wider financial-transaction tax comes at the expense of Wall Streetâs big banks and other financial institutions (over 50 billion of capital). I feel good that they have recovered from the crisis, are growing nicely again, earning good bonuses and I believe they should be able to weather this government storm. In our case, a wider financial-transaction tax would put traders out of business overnight, whereas this big-bank fee budget proposal is just an additional and affordable cost of doing still-very- profitable business for Wall Street. Traders still face many new obstacles coming from Washington like restrictions on naked access, reined in leverage, higher capital, more restricted position limits, and other regulatory rules too. Plus, new taxes on the investment community like the Senate's health tax proposal for a 1 percent Medicare tax applied on earned income, plus for the first time investment income too (a ground breaking change in the tax code). Donât forget carried interest tax breaks are repealed in 2011 per President Obama's 2010 budget passed last February, and the House alone just passed a bill to repeal carried interest a year earlier in 2010. Capital gains and qualifying dividends taxes are going up in 2011 to 20 percent from 15 percent. All types of taxes are going up and that includes tax attacks coming on the investment community. So keep watching our backs and keep fighting together. Plus, we still need to hammer down fringe nails on the financial-transaction tax when they arise which I expect will still be fairly often, if not in the U.S. then in Europe. Yes, this is just a proposal for a Presidential budget item and the President needs Congressional approval. Plenty of things can go wrong still so we must remain vigilant. But this is shaping up to be a foundation for no US wider financial-transaction tax and we all know how much damage that would cause to the American economy. I just heard on CNBC that the banks were totally surprised to learn about this new big-bank transaction tax? How can big banks claim that level of ignorance? For months, we have been fighting a very public call for a financial-transaction-tax intended to address infractions on Wall Street. Main Street traders claimed the tax would too heavily fall on Main Street and Wall Street would deflect it or win exemptions. That would be perverse. The President talked about this big-bank tax in August too. Did Wall Street risk management departments miss this one too? We asked Wall Street to help in our efforts and they raised a blind-eye. Wall Street did not care to help online traders with our petitions and efforts and I don't think we should be cannon-fodder for Wall Street now either in attempting to help them (which wouldn't work anyway).
Really? Are you only reading the parts you like? The "financial crisis responsibility fee" would target major institutions. It would be levied on those that were the main contributors to the financial crisis and the most significant beneficiaries of the extraordinary actions taken by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. "My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed. And my determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people - who have not been made whole, and who continue to face real hardship in this recession," said President Barack Obama in a statement. Full details about how the measure would work will be part of Obama's proposed 2011 budget, which won't be released until early next month. http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/14/news/economy/bailout_tax/index.htm Why don't you wait until you get the details before venting your wrath?
Much less than a financial transaction tax, that's what is important in this case. There are untaxed smaller banks waiting to take their market share. And if you prefer a Transaction Tax, say it directly. Everybody must support this bank tax or De Fazio's proposal can still happen.
Fees are pretty much another word for taxes like stimulus package was another word for bailout. Obama and his PR team are clearly trying their best not to make themselves look like the previous Bush administration but anyone with half a brain can see that they both follow the exact same policies.