The general idea is to devise a levy that would help reduce the budget deficit, which is now at a level not seen since World War II, and would also discourage the kinds of excessive risk-taking among financial institutions that led to a near collapse of Wall Street in 2008, the officials said.<\/font><\/p>\n But the president also has a political purpose \u2014 to respond to the anger building across the country as big banks, having been rescued by the taxpayers, report record profits and begin paying out huge bonuses while millions of Americans remain out of work.<\/font><\/p>\n The administration previously rejected two ideas that have received much attention in recent months: a transaction tax on financial trades and a special tax on executives\u2019 bonuses. <\/font><\/p>\n The most likely alternatives would be a tax based on the size and riskiness of an institution\u2019s loans and other financial holdings, or a tax on profits<\/strong>. <\/font><\/p>\n Lobbyists for bankers, taken by surprise, immediately objected to any new tax. They said financial institutions had been repaying their portion of the bailout money in full, with interest. Losses from the $700 billion bailout fund \u2014 estimated to run as high as $120 billion \u2014 are expected to come from the automobile companies and their finance arms, the insurance giant American International Group and programs to avert home foreclosures, and the president is aiming to recoup that money.<\/font><\/p>\n \u201cIt is perplexing to us,\u201d said Edward L. Yingling, president and chief executive of the American Bankers Association. He recalled that Mr. Obama recently had two White House meetings with bankers to urge them to provide more loans to credit-starved small businesses. But a tax, he said, would be \u201ca hit on banks that will decrease their ability to lend.\u201d… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n Of course cousin FatCat and his bankster buddies oppose this, but their arguments are pathetic. The statement that they are paying back everything they got with interest ignores a crucial fact. A huge portion of governments $120 billion loss comes from bailing out AIG, and most of those funds were payments to banks, snuck through the back door by Geithner and Paulson. Saying that a tax would decrease their ability to lend is bogus, because they aren\u2019t lending anyway. They\u2019re speculating. I can\u2019t say whether or not I endorse Obama\u2019s plan until he presents it. I cannot evaluate it until I know what it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, something has to be done! President Obama will try to recoup for taxpayers as much as $120 billion of the money spent to bail out the financial system, most likely through a tax on large banks, administration and Congressional officials said Monday.The president has yet to settle on the details, and his senior economic […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"FatCat\"](\"http:\/\/s217.photobucket.com\/albums\/cc83\/TomCat1948or2\/Blog%202010\/J-M\/ObamaConsidersaBigBanksTax_1BC0\/FatCat.jpg\" "\\"FatCat\\"")
<\/a> President Obama will try to recoup for taxpayers as much as $120 billion of the money spent to bail out the financial system, most likely through a tax on large banks, administration and Congressional officials said Monday.The president has yet to settle on the details, and his senior economic advisers are weighing a number of options as they finish the budget proposal Mr. Obama will release next month. <\/font><\/p>\n