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FAIR MARKET Solution, Retroactive 90% Tax on ALL Wall Street Bonuses
Since we're off the charts here, one way Congress can cushion the expected $700 Billion+ pay out to is to demand back the bonuses distributed on Wall Street the last 5 years.
There is finally (gulp) talk of limiting future CEO benefit, but that doesn't cut it.
If the street made so much profit destroying our system, let THE STREET be the first people to pony up the base cash to bail the system out.
How about congress demand 90% retroactive tax on the Billions of Billions of Wall Street bonus? No loop holes. No exceptions. If you don't have all of your bonus still, we'll take what you have, and put you in bankruptcy. Just as the street does to the small home owner.
If just 5 firms paid out $39 Billion Dollars last year alone, I assume their must be at least 100 or 200 Billion more out there, which is a good down payment to the huge fund being established.
If we as taxpayers are responsible for the downside, no way should they be able to keep the ridiculous upside they made breaking the very system we're obliged to fix.
This can even be parsed in their language. Make the retroactive tax a mandatory investment in the new fund that is being created . The same mandatory investment me, you, and the rest of the tax payers will be obliged to commit to shortly. It's extreme, but if we profit in the end (as is being floated about), then maybe, AFTER the taxpayers are refunded (not likely), they can get some back in the end as well.
That is FAIR MARKET.
Comments (15)
Recommend This one!!
September 22, 2008 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't believe such things are able to pass a constitutionality test.
That said, if they did, I'd endorse it 100%, and urge a follow-on expropriation of all personal property of anyone in mid-to-upper-management and board levels for all those institutions being rescued. Not to mention sentencing all the individuals involved to a lifetime of minimum wage employment.
September 22, 2008 6:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mara Bharat Mahaan!
September 23, 2008 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I believe we should bring back the guillotine. I'd settle for public hangings if they left the corpses hanging from the street lights in front of the corporate headquarters as a warning to the next board of directors.
September 23, 2008 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
A classic example of the left wing nut cases that post here. You are jealous that other people succeed in life while you are no doubt a greeter at WalMart. It wasn't evil CEO's that caused this mess, it was deadbeat borrowers that got loans they couldn't repay, lied to get them, and then walked away when the property values went down. They gambled that values would only go up, but don't want to take the loss when they didn't. And you want to paint them as the innocent victims.
September 22, 2008 11:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your invective aside, the boilerplate about greedy consumers is, at best, a half-truth. It is true that some portion of the failing loans at the heart of the current economic woes were taken by consumers hell-bent on getting a quick buck on an even faster turn-around property sale. However, I think it is fair to say that, without the deregulation sought for by the financial sector and spearheaded by former Sen. Gramm and Sen. McCain (his protege), the lenders would never have been able to grant those "greedy" consumers the loans they desired.
So, any quasi-rational and inquisitive mind might be drawn to ask, why were the corporations comprising the financial sector seeking to loosen the rules regulating their industry? When coupled with the massive profits those same corporations made over the years of steadily reducing regulations, it doesn't take a genius to discern their likely motivation.
September 23, 2008 1:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, it was the evil CEO who caused this problem, and not just among the financial sectors. The number of "bad loans" among sub-prime borrowers is a fraction of the total, which is also a fraction of the total loans outstanding.
The problem is the loans that reset to ridiculous rates, forcing homeowners to default and thus adding more strain to an already fragile system. That is the type of policy that CEO's mandate. The loan officer didn't all of a sudden decide to not require income verification in exchange for a higher rate.
These arrogant pricks knew exactly what they were doing. They gamed the system, again, made a ton of money and will be getting a bailout from tax payers to compensate them for their losses.
It's not about being jealous of other people's success, Rushbot. It is about designing a system that function efficiently and effectively. To do that, we'll need a massive amount of money. These pricks caused the problem, they should be held accountable for fixing it.
They took the risks just like the "deadbeat borrowers" you decry. Rather than "losing their houses" these companies get a bailout. Privatize the profits and socialize the losses.
What a bunch of hypocrites neoconservatives turned out to be.
September 23, 2008 8:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hardly a left wing nut case. A big fan of free market and even the market in general.
This post wasn't inspired by jealousy but rather outrage in reading the ABC blog http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/last-years-big.html pointing out (in an 'off the chart' way) the insane bonuses rewarding specifically those that created the mechanisms that we seem to be footing the bill for.
Also, for the record, I don't work at Walmart thanks, but do hope those that do (and shop there) can recognize the contempt that people like you on the right have for them.
As I read yesterday here: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Trumka_on_race.html
"We need to get the message out that a worker who votes for John McCain is like a chicken who votes for Colonel Sanders," Richard Trumka
September 23, 2008 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Personally, I feel we should treat the bonuses as advanced payday loans, taken at the average rate for the city of residence of the individual who received the bonus. They usually come with an obscene interest rate and several hidden fees. If the "loans" were considered granted at the time of the original funds dispersal, the Fed would probably be pretty close to the 700 Billion it's seeking.
September 23, 2008 2:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent suggestion. These guys privatize profit, socialize loss. They create exactly...nothing. Except massive windfalls for themselves, and the conditions for a global economic catastrophe for everyone else.
It's Kafkaesque. The Right and hypocrisy have become synonymous, and here's yet another glaring example that also serves as proof that all their bullshit about markets is exactly that: bullshit.
Now, I don't totally absolve the homeowners in all this. No one has ever come along to bail me out for stupid decisions. I've paid for every single one. And when I shopped mortgages, you can be damn sure the "what will the interest rate be in 3 years?" question was answered, and I bought a smaller house with a fixed mortgage instead. Just in case. So, I don't have a whole lotta sympathy for these folks, either.
But drug users AND dealers are both criminalized by the moral watchdogs of the Right.
So, why in this instance should the dealers in this whole fiasco get to keep all the profit and pass on all the loss, walking free and unscathed and unrepentant, dictating terms, and holding us all hostage?
September 23, 2008 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is an excellent idea, though I doubt that it'll ever come to pass. They're all chums at the top.
The sub-prime loan defaults are but a small slice of the bigger scam - it's the 30:1 leverage of exotic SIVs, CDOs and other new-fangled instruments built on these mortgages that no one seems to understand that is truly the problem.
The defaulting homeowners have already paid by surrendering their homes for foreclosure. Wall St, however, has walked away with billions of windfall they rewarded themselves for proliferating these toxic debts. The money disappeared - right into their pockets.
This government should have sounded the alarm and put a stop to the excesses - god knows a large number of economists did from the first sign of the housing bubble years ago.
Why aren't we after their money? The only reason is that the fat cats are all part of the same inner circle as the politicians.
September 23, 2008 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I can't see a way to do that legally, but it is certainly a tempting idea.
That said, we should be very aggressive in our investigations of these companies and we should start charging huge fines for any sort of SEC infraction. Our regulations have been inadequate, but we did have a few regulations on the books, and I'll bet you dollars to donuts that we can find lots of places where companies cut corners knowing regulations wouldn't be enforced by the Bushies.
And to the cleverleghumper, you are an idiot. In many cases, these loans were being pushed onto people whose only sin was that they trusted the mortgage brokers who assured them that this was a great loan, a great deal and there would be no problems. Borrowers did not understand what they were getting, and oftentimes mortgage brokers didn't even truly understand what they were selling. But the brokers didn't care because they made money, and the banks didn't care because they were just going to sell off the loans immediately anyway, so they made money. Smart people knew this was a giant ponzi scheme, but as long as the money kept rolling in, they didn't care.
September 23, 2008 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
The fact that people didn't understand what they were signing does not absolve them from blame. You also ignore the vast cadre of flippers who were sure they would make a huge quick profit, and now want someone else to eat their loss. You people are blaming CEO's. Name one. Tell me which company is responsible. You ignore the fact that Democrats pushed laws that forced companies to lend to sub prime customers, they were threatened with red-lining lawsuits if they did not issue a certain percentage of these risky loans. The Carter-era CRA that was ramped up under Clinton played a big part, as did Fannie and Freddie under Obama supporters Johnson and Raines. It's fair to blame hedge funds and the politicians that allowed them to sell credit default swaps. They should not be bailed out. But the major banks are more victim in this than the borrowers.
September 23, 2008 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I mean, we're talking about not just bad investments but outright fraud here. It's Enron a few times over. These CEOs should be in jail, or pushed out of a plane in their 24Kgolden parachute.
Of course they'd get away scot free, the govt is as guilty of fraud and mismanagement. We the sheeple are for all to fleece:
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/stathis/2008/0922.html
....But that’s not all. We have seen how billions are missing in Iraq.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/31/9330/
And we all know about the irresponsibility and fraud from FEMA.
http://www.fbi.gov/katrina.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11278238/
Perhaps the most shocking display of fraud and irresponsibility, the Department of Defense cannot account for over $3.3 trillion taxpayer dollars.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/18/MN251738.DTL http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml
Still, the abuse continues, from virtually every major drug company defrauding Medicare and Medicaid of billions, HMOs gauging prices and refusing coverage while employers shift higher costs to employees, CEOs destroying companies and leaving with dynasties, while the most fortunate segment of the working class continues the Bush-era trend of benefit cuts and no wage growth, while struggling to pay for food, gas and healthcare. Others have lost their jobs as corporations dump them for the cheap labor created by unfair free trade policies endorsed by Washington.
September 23, 2008 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
This 10% tax proposal will help. Also - let's have the Iraqi's chip in. After all, don't they have a $79 billion oil surplus?
We all need to email and phone our Senators and Reps DAILY. Tell them Congress should not adjourn until there are 1) more hearings and investigations, 2) help for the middle class, 3) a tax increase on those making more than $500,000 per year, companies that ship jobs overseas, and excess oil profits, 4) and perhaps even appointment of a Special Prosecutor with a grand jury to delve into possible criminality in all this.
I could only watch a few minutes on CSPAN at lunch, but even that made my blood pressure go up dramatically, and I'm normally healthy.
September 23, 2008 2:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
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