A Good Start

He'll have to pay a fee.


He won't

The proposal recently mooted by the Obama Administration, to levy a fee on financial institutions in order to recover TARP funds (see also here) seems like a good start.

But between Mssrs. Summers and Geithner, along with the DINO back-bencher pukes on the House Banking Committee, you can be sure that it will be so full of loopholes that the only banks that might have to pay anything will be the mom-and-pop banks who've done all the right thing.

Note also that this makes no mention of recouping the facilities that the Federal Reserve has offered, which have gone largely to the very large banks, and banks that have former Federal Reserve board members working for them.

The problem is that people are either:

1. Bought and paid for, or
2. Deluded enough to think that the big bankers are essential to the functioning of the American economy.
   

What really needs to be done is:

3. These folks, and the industry needs to be convinced to leave the country.
4. Predator drones armed with Hellfire missiles are used to take them out like other terrorists.

Now there's a recruiting slogan for the USAF: Join up and blow up a banker.