I’ve done so many of these that I’ve lost count. Fox Business has the dirty details on a brand-new attax…er, attack…er, tax on the cream of the American financial sector:
President Obama will announce today a new “financial crisis responsibility fee” on the top 50 financial firms that is designed to recoup at least $90 billion in projected losses in the government’s bank bailout program, a senior Administration official said….
The official said the fee would be set at 0.15% and, if approved by Congress, would be assessed starting in June for at least a decade on firms with assets of more than $50 billion, including U.S. subsidiaries of foreign banks and large insurance companies with bank or thrift subsidiaries.
If you thought that the biggest vacuums of TARP, specifically the now-government-owned companies which will never repay the money, were going to be part of this, or that those institutions that managed to not get strong-armed into TARP will escape this, think again:
The fee would be paid not just by some firms that received investment capital from the government’s $700 billion Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP) and by many banks that have already repaid their TARP funds, but also by some firms that did not take TARP money. “All of them have benefitted both from the stabilization (measures), as well as the exceptional, extraordinary Federal Reserve actions,” the official said.
But the two auto companies that the government bailed out last year, General Motors and Chrysler, would not pay the fee, the official said, and neither would mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the government also took over in 2008. He said the fee “does not and cannot work for a more industrial company like an auto company” and that charging Fannie and Freddie would amount to moving taxpayer money “from one pocket to another.”
That’s right; this is another wealth transfer from responsible companies to the most-irresponsible, government-subsidized companies. But wait, there’s more. Do note the “at least a decade”. If the TARP losses are less than the $90 billion that it’s “likely” going to be, where’s the rest of that money going?
