Clueless in Seattle

Sorry, I meant to say ‘Washington’ but Seattle sounded better.

I just read this article which is supposed to be good news for us little people. The President intends to tax banks in order to recoup some of the obscene amount of money paid out to them in the recent bailout.

Of course, the banks don’t like this idea, but if it goes through, money will be flowing back to Washington to repay all that taxpayer money that went to help the banks who were broke because they’d been abusing taxpayers all these years.

The President apparently: challenged those who say banks can't afford the tax without passing the costs on to shareholders and customers.

He doesn’t think that will happen. He must not actually deal with a bank of his own, because I noticed the minute money began pouring out of government coffers and into bank vaults, the fees I pay at my bank went up. ‘Free checking’ which was all the rage over the last few years while banks competed for business became extinct overnight. It hasn’t cost me a dime to maintain any of my bank accounts for years, but in the last few months I’ve racked up probably $30.00 or more in fees – and these are just for routine ‘maintenance’. I’m sure I’m not alone.

We’ve seen this same thing happen with our credit cards as soon as legislation was passed to curb their abusive practices. They responded with more fees, higher interest rates and sneaky contract changes that mean consumers will bleed money at a time they’re least able to afford it. Punish the people when the government punishes us. That’s the motto of big business these days.

Now the banks will get to do more of the same. But the President doesn’t think this will actually occur. Those fat-cat bank executives will happily fork over tax money to the government without penalizing their customers, right? If their inflated salaries and bonuses go down, oh well, they’re all nice guys. They’ll manage.

Yeah.

If I thought my tax money might be used to buy Washington a clue, I might not be so angry. Washington should forget taxing the banks and start jailing bank executives. Oh, wait, then my taxes would still go up to keep them all in Federal prison and give them free health care.