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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (40439)	1/14/2010 6:43:11 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

without repaying the taxpayers for their TARP bailouts If it was a loan or something otherwise given with the communicated understanding that it should be paid back, then it should be paid back. Straight out grants, well if you give the money to someone without preconditions than its theirs. The government really doesn't have any right to demand payback. This isn't payback, its taxation. Raising these taxes is different than having it paid back, its not "if we gave you a billion, you give us back a billion", its imposing fees/taxes on the banks, apparently with no direct connection to the amount of money they received. Instead its based on size, leverage levels, and probably some other categories or qualifications, which aren't clear right now.

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (40439)	1/15/2010 1:16:22 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

But allowing the mega-bailout firms to escape without* repaying the taxpayers for their TARP bailouts* From Each According To Their Ability... Posted by Jay Tea Published: January 15, 2010 - 11:00 AM President Obama has announced his plan to recover the money the government gave to banks through the TARP program: a tax on banks that should recoup up to $120 billion. That's a tax on all the big banks, of course. Not the little banks. And not the banks run by GM and Chrysler. Just the big banks. Whether or not they took any TARP money in the first place. Or, if they did, whether or not they paid it back. This isn't about recovering the people's money. It's about increasing the government's control over the banking business. It's about "punishing" the banks that paid their top folks more than the government thinks they should. It's about the government making certain it has control over the banking industry. It tried with TARP, but it only roped in a few. And some of those squirmed off the hook by paying back the loans (despite the government's initial refusal to accept repayments). So now we have the Obama administration's plan to recoup the money that most of us wrote off the instant it was paid out -- from the pockets of the innocent and the guilty alike. The sole criteria is which ones can pay, and haven't already completely surrendered their independence to the Obama administration. Is this the "change" so many voted for? I fear it is. wizbangblog.com