Tax ’em!

The Financial Times has a list of 14 reasons why US bankers should be taxed for their outsize bonuses. Both Britain and France have begun to do this.

1. People on Main Street are furious about Wall Street bonuses.

2. This anger is justified because the bonuses are based in large part on windfall profits. These profits derive from taxpayer-backed interventions that stabilised the financial system, paving the way for a  recovery in financial markets and collapse of risk spreads.

3. All banks benefited from this bailout – not just the ones that took or still have Tarp funds. Even the strong gained hugely from Fed liquidity and government actions to ensure none of their weaker counterparties failed (including but by no means limited to the AIG case).

4. In an ideal world, these interventions would have been structured up front in a way that ensured the value created did not leak out to banks and bankers. But they were not.

The Food Stamp Queue

I have often heard people remark, “If things are so bad, where are the bread lines?”

Observe:

Food Stamp Participation

There they are!

TARP: Unstated Losses

The Financial Press is busy crowing over the loss estimates for the Paulson Bailout, claiming that losses have been “cut” by $200 Billion dollars. Of course, this still leaves $500 Billion unaccounted for, but standards for good news have fallen to the extent that a $500 billion loss is considered a ray of hope.

Unfortunately, we will be spared even that brief ray. Research from ProPublica conclusively debunks the claim that TARP losses have been mitigated, if only for the fact that the program has not yet finished.

As they say:

The latest estimate accounts for only the first year of spending, and the TARP’s spending isn’t done. Treasury says it expects the ultimate cost to be higher. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner extended [8] the TARP thru Oct. 3, 2010, the TARP’s second birthday, earlier this week. He said, though, that Treasury didn’t expect to deploy more than $550 billion of the $700 billion available. As of today, Treasury has committed a total of about $407.3 billion [2] (that’s excluding companies that have refunded their bailout money [6]).

The TARP still has a little less than half its funds to distribute; meanwhile bank failures haven’t even begun to slow (three more failed this Friday, bringing the total to 167 this year), and unemployment still hovers around 17-20 per cent. It seems a bit premature to be declaring victory for the TARP.