Barack Obama's plan to tax banks to get “our money back” seems to be little more than a political response to the public outrage over his bailout of undeserving banks, hedge funds, automakers, and homebuilders.
For the record, Obama voted for TARP as a Senator. As President, he has implemented other giveaway programs to banks, including near 0% interest rates, taxpayer guarantees of bank deposits and money market funds, the Term Asset Securities Loan Facility, and worst of all, the so-called Public Private Partnership Investment Program. Obama has defended all these actions as necessary to preventing a collapse of the financial system. Now he wants to tax and vilify the same institutions he has been propping up?
"It's time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts and no cop-outs. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody." Thus President Obama laid down the gauntlet in his recent State of the Union address. Yet he remains committed to subsidizing industries. And mortgage lending is high on his priority list. In his speech, he announced a plan that "gives every responsible homeowner the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage, by refinancing at historically low rates...A small fee on the largest institutions will ensure that it won't add to the deficit, and will give banks that were rescued by taxpayers a chance to repay a deficit of trust."
"Jobs that Americans won't do" is a weak, if common rationale for high levels of immigration. Get set for an equally dubious idea to justify immigration: "housing that Americans can't buy." Senators Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, are believers. And they're offering a sweet deal. On Thursday, October 20, the two lawmakers 
If one word best summarizes the current housing market, "foreclosure" would be it. Despite record-low interest rates, American homeowners are losing their properties with greater frequency than at any time since the Great Depression. Yet banks and other financial institutions, until very recently 
Call it a paradox. The U.S. economy officially has been out of recession for 15 months. The stock market enjoyed a record-high September; durable goods orders are up; and consumer spending is growing. Yet homeowners continue to lose their properties at a frequency not seen since the Great Depression. And this is despite - and possibly to some extent, because of - an emergency federal program in place for the past year and a half designed to stave off foreclosures. Call it instead, then, a consumer bailout. But don't expect it to end soon.
Despite mortgage interest rates falling to near all-time lows, America's homeowners are in a state of unease not seen since the Great Depression. In 2009, 
One of the more entrenched principles in business is "pay for performance," the rewarding of executives with raises, bonuses and other forms of compensation if they meet or exceed expectations. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, now wards of the federal government, are negations of that principle. The troubled secondary mortgage lending giants, already having received more than $110 billion in federal subsidies since the fall of 2008, are set for another major feed at the public trough. On December 24, the U.S. Treasury Department, facing a December 31 deadline, 
Of all the factors behind the collapse of America's financial institutions during the second half of 2008, few have been as trumpeted - or misunderstood - as the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). This Carter-era legislation, intended to boost residential mortgage lending in lower-income urban neighborhoods, increasingly has served as a blank check for community groups to shake down depository institutions into lowering their credit standards to reach marginally qualified borrowers. In extracting such concessions, these groups have contributed to the ongoing explosion in loan defaults and foreclosures. Undaunted, House Democrats, led by 
