In case you haven’t heard, it’s go time for the Obama administration to cover its continually-growing deficit with no sign of increased foreign investor demand for unstable and uncertain US debt. What happened to passing a health care overhaul before Christmas? And what about those 140 failed banks in 2009? And hey! What became of that $700 billion in stimulus money that was supposed to save and create bazillions of jobs?
Here’s the solution. Tax their asses.
NYT:

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.

In a desperate scramble to come up for cash, the administration has thrown out a couple of unpopular ideas (unpopular if you’re a banker, of course) including excessive taxes on bonuses and bizarre financial transaction taxes. Like squeezing blood from turnips, apparently these guys forget that it was less than a year and a half ago that Hank Paulson appeared on the Hill threatening full-on financial doomsday were TARP not instituted rightf*ckingnow. So much for pulling out the bazooka in his pocket.
And let us not forget that shit rolls down hill. Who do you think would ultimately be responsible for these additional monies? The banks or the idiot customers who continue to shovel out ever-increasing fees to said banks? Exactly.

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 — estimated to run as high as $120 billion — 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.

I really, really hate to side with the bankers here but they are absolutely right. If retribution for the financial crisis is our goal, taxing them to death isn’t the way to achieve that. If paying our government’s bills is the goal, however, I could see how this could easily be spun into populist payback for the pain and suffering of the last 2 years.
Hate to break it to you, America, but any money potentially recouped by this genius scheme has already been spent and certainly wouldn’t result in any long term benefit to us as a country. I’d use the pay day loan analogy again but hell, isn’t it played out by now?