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Obama proposes bank fee, slams Wall Street:
Whoa. That looks pretty radical! Let's read on:
Wow, can you imagine? The banks could bilk Americans even more than they do now? That would indeed be a serious blow to everyone's pocketbook.
Hey, wait a minute. They're planning on recuperating this amount within 10 years? The U.S. government lost all this TARP money in a single year. This 0.0015% fee would be an infinitesimal drop in the banks' golden buckets. They would not even notice a difference. I mean that's 9 billion dollars of taxation per year, where I think Goldman Sachs alone is handing out a few billion dollars' worth of bonuses itself alone. So really, this is nowhere as aggressive a measure as it sounds.
The best part of this meek proposal, though, is the fun reversal Obama is operating here: Instead of calling this a tax (you can hear the Republicans howling before the word "tax" is finished being uttered), they're calling this a "bank fee". Get it? The banks are being charged a fee. Hehehe.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Thursday proposed Wall Street banks pay up to $117 billion to reimburse taxpayers for the financial bailout, as he slammed bankers for their "massive profits and obscene bonuses."
[...]
Striking a populist tone, Obama called for a fee on the biggest U.S. banks to "recover every single dime" the government spent rescuing the financial sector from its worst crisis since the Great Depression.
Whoa. That looks pretty radical! Let's read on:
Democrats in Congress signaled they would quickly take up the legislation.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus praised Obama for "working to ensure taxpayers see a return on their investment."
"I remain committed to working with the president, and my colleagues across the aisle, to make sure this proposal is right," he said.
But Republicans may try to block it. Some of them have criticized the bank fee as a tax that would be passed on to small businesses and Americans with savings accounts.
Republican Representative Scott Garrett said the bank tax would "further cripple the economy" through its impact on consumers and small firms.
Wow, can you imagine? The banks could bilk Americans even more than they do now? That would indeed be a serious blow to everyone's pocketbook.
Obama's proposal [...] calls for a levy of 0.15 of a percentage point on the balance sheets of companies with assets exceeding $50 billion.
The Obama administration expects to raise $90 billion over the first 10 years, and thinks this will ultimately cover all losses from TARP, although at the moment these losses are being projected at $117 billion.
Hey, wait a minute. They're planning on recuperating this amount within 10 years? The U.S. government lost all this TARP money in a single year. This 0.0015% fee would be an infinitesimal drop in the banks' golden buckets. They would not even notice a difference. I mean that's 9 billion dollars of taxation per year, where I think Goldman Sachs alone is handing out a few billion dollars' worth of bonuses itself alone. So really, this is nowhere as aggressive a measure as it sounds.
The best part of this meek proposal, though, is the fun reversal Obama is operating here: Instead of calling this a tax (you can hear the Republicans howling before the word "tax" is finished being uttered), they're calling this a "bank fee". Get it? The banks are being charged a fee. Hehehe.