Valerie Jarrett On Double Dipping The Tax Payer By Way Of Bank Fees
January 14, 2010 / 6:54 pm • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierDoes it make sense to give banks fees when the consumer will ultimately pay? No. But that’s exactly what President Obama is doing. His best friend Valerie Jarrett explains why this makes sense:
Obama Administration officials estimate that losses from the TARP program are around $120 billion, and argue this new tax will pay for those losses.
However, much of the estimated loss from TARP comes from the auto industry bailout.
So what appears to happening here is that the Obama Administration and congressional Democrats are attempting to levy a tax on financial institutions — some of which never received TARP funds, some which have already paid them back — in large part to pay for the bailout of the auto industry, a bailout which greatly favored the autoworkers’ unions, a Democratic Party constituency.
Michelle Malkin calls it “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee” = The Cover Tim Geithner’ A** Tax and says:
2. The tax won’t apply to non-banks, black holes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or the bailed-out auto companies.
3. This isn’t about getting “our money” back. It’s about redistributing it again under the guise of faux populism.
More to the point, this is what I call the Cover Tim Geithner’s A** Tax. Making banks the whipping boys takes the heat off Geithner for his incompetent, complicit, and transparency-subverting tenure as New York Federal Reserve chair.
Team Obama wants you to keep your eyes on its fatcat barbecue charade.
But don’t be distracted. Geithner will be on the hot seat next week in Congress. And that’s where the real scrutiny of “financial crisis responsibility” lies.
Yup. Man, the Obama administration has the faux-populism schtick down. The words are like honey, but they give a terrible case of indigestion once you eat them.
They count on people being stupid. They hope people are distracted by their sweet words. And people have been in the short term, but when people get deeper in, they feel taken. Over and over again.
It’s the utter contempt for the American people that’s so disgusting.
