Who would have thought? In its true and hypocritical form The Party of No and Obstruction opposes President Obama's proposed fees on banks.
Dick Cheney must be hard at work at that printing press in his undisclosed basement.
Prominent Republicans are coming out in opposition to President Barack Obama's proposal for a $90-billion fee on large banks that took bailout money, a move that political observers say could force the GOP to choose between their traditional anti-tax position and populist anger over the bailout.
On Thursday, GOP Chairman Michael Steele declared that the bank fee -- which would be levied only on banks that took bailout money and have more than $50 billion in assets -- is "another tax on the American public."
The GOP is standing by fat cat the banker in yet another effort to oppose President Obama. Republicans demonstrate time and time again that they are willing to put politics ahead of working on solutions to solve the daunting challenges that we face on local, state and national levels.
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All of the Republican's ranting and raving about the federal bailout is nothing but ginned up rhetoric. Apparently GOP lawmakers hate the bailout and yet they love the banks so much that they do not believe Wall St., aka gambling casinos that put Las Vegas to shame, should have to make reparations to the taxpayers for squandering and stealing our money. God forbid should the big banks have to pay fines for its appallingly irresponsible and over the top reckless behavior that annihilated the U.S. and global economy.
The financial services industry lobbied for the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act in 1999. That allowed banks to use their custodial power over your money to assume huge risks in investment markets.
They also lobbied for the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which allowed banks to trade their crooked insurance in secret and exempted from all supervisory authority.
And to help grow the hurricane, then CEO of Goldman Sachs Hank Paulson made a personal plea to the SEC to allow banks to leverage more money against their capital. As much as $4,000 for every $100 in capital they held.
Wall Street may claim this was caused by a perfect storm, but the only thing perfect about it was their ability to line their pockets at the expense of our country.
Republicans apparently think it is a good idea for the banks to return to its wild, careless and out of control gambling practices that all but destroyed our financial security.
The proposed tax would apply to bank, thrift and insurance companies with more than $50 billion in assets and would start after June 30. It would not apply to certain holdings, like customers' insured savings, but to assets in risk-taking operations. The levy would raise an estimated $90 billion over 10 years, according to the White House.
But it would remain in force longer if all losses to the bailout fund, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, were not recovered after a decade. The Treasury now projects that the losses from the $700 billion loan program, which was created in October 2008, could reach $117 billion, about a third of the loss that it projected last summer - an improved forecast that reflected the renewed strength on Wall Street.
After all, last week during the Texas Republican gubernatorial debate Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison said she and John Cornyn hated voting for the bank bail out. But, alas, they did so only because then President G.W. Bush instructed them to do so in order to save the U.S. and global economy from a complete melt down.
A glimpse at a Texas Republican clown show.
In their twisted logic Republican politicians insist they hated saving the banks but now they hate imposing punitive fees on the banks' biggest gamblers.
I suppose now that Sarah Palin has been hired as a professional analyst by FOX, the Propaganda Arm for the RNC, all of the GOP's verbal inconsistencies and contradictions will soon be fully explained.
Republican lawmakers will howl like possessed banshees about terrorism and the profound urgency for our national security. They also routinely cry for border fences, racial profiling and full body scanners at all airports. And yet when it comes to safeguarding our financial and economic security, Republicans, it appears, are not in the least bit concerned. For them Fat Cat the Banker can do no wrong.
According to an article written by Mr. Frank Rich of the New York Times
The Other Plot to Wreck America
Americans might be fluent in global terror and the horrors of terrorism but we are woefully uninformed about our domestic financial weapons of mass destruction.
Americans must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed. Now that it can count on government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its risks - secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the losses.
The Director of the Financial Crisis Commission intends to shed some light on the big banks and its financial practices (greed, hubris, stupidity - gosh, why this sounds like a typical old home week of the W. Administration of arrogance and incompetence) over the last several years.
He wants to examine the financial sector's "greed, stupidity, hubris and outright corruption" - from traders on the ground to the board room. "It's important that we deliver new information," he said. "We can't just rehash what we've known to date." He understands that if he fails to make news or to tell the story in a way that is comprehensible and compelling enough to arouse Americans to demand action, Wall Street and Washington will both keep moving on, unchallenged and unchastened.
Maybe the W. Administration and all of its lackeys including Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison were far too distracted by non-existent WMD's in Iraq and no bid contracts to the military/industrial complex to worry much about Wall St.
