Sorry, but I know too many people personally who have been devasted financially by what started as a huge securities ripoff by the very lending institutions which apparently now have your deepest sympathy, as they fully intend to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again.
The intricacies of those hellish deals are still not completely understood, even by economists holding Ph.D's. Who knew until the night before that even BofA was also in trouble? Do we really know that's on the books of BB&T? What do you suppose they intend to do with the troubled assets they recently purchased from bankrupt Colonial Bank? Nobody else wanted that albatross. As Paulson reminded everyone at the pinnacle of this disaster, with the banking industry, it's all about "liquidity."
You can defend them all you want and inject your political ideology to justify that, but if anyone's going to prison, it should be the greedy bastards who thought they could get away with it.
Maggie, these people were operating their businesses under the regulations laid upon them by Congress. And hell yeah, some were certainly taking advantage. But that's the REASON we bother with regulation at all... to keep that from happening.
The proposed "fees" are politically motivated. They're designed to cause division through class warfare, to unify the base, and to deflect the blame for poor regulation and poor enforcement.... to cover their own asses. This administration is harnessing the misery of our economically wounded citizens to its own advantage as political capital.
Of course, both parties share in the guilt, but people like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, who have spent their careers making an unholy mess of this thing are riding point on it. Instead of taking responsibility for their own screw-ups, now that their incompetence has created REAL DAMAGE, they're pointing the finger of blame at somebody else. Worse... they're doing the same things that caused the problems. Again, loosening lending standards and guaranteeing risky loans.
It's like bad parenting really. Leave the cookie jar out on the floor without explicit instruction to stay out of it, and then blame the kids when they take a cookie. Greed is as common to human nature as compassion. The whole purpose of "regulating" is to confine it.
For our purposes on this thread, it's not about "political ideology"... it's simpler than that. It's about what's right and what's wrong. Our national ideology abhors punishment without trial or any other kind of deviation from the assumption of innocence until guilt is PROVED. So, if the financial industry, or members of it, broke the law... why aren't they being tried and then punished?
You know, if it weren't for "political ideology" and manipulated class division, I feel confident that we'd all agree that 'Extortion is always wrong' and that 'Guilt should be established before punishment'. I think, again if it weren't for "political ideology" and manipulated class division, we'd likely both agree that the law should be applied to all Americans EQUALLY and without bias.
Political motivation? At this point, I really wonder just who is politicizing this. If Republicans were in charge and proposed such a "fee" (because the public is very, very angry at mega-banks these days), I do believe Republicans/conservatives/whateverpeoplecallthemselvestoday would be shouting hallelelujah.
The TARP was intended to stabalize the banks. The banks are stable, have paid back the TARP funds and now are making money.
That is a success story.
Conservatives believe that success should be rewarded while Liberals feel that success should be punished. The fact that Liberals want to punish this particular success is nothing new.
If a politician wants this, he is not a Conservative whether he is a Democrat or a Republican. Anybody who proposes or suppports this is a Liberal so the party I.D. is meaningless. Always has been and always will be.