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?
General Motors has recently disclosed on more than one occasion that "we have determined that our disclosure controls and procedures and our internal control over financial reporting are currently not effective." It remains to be seen how this warning affects future earnings reports, but we can review GM's past to see how previous financial reporting internal control flaws played out.
The General Motors' IPO has lead to the Obama Administration declaring victory for a successful GM restructuring. GM executives echo the optimistic view of a now healthy auto company with a "fortress like" balance sheet since the infusion of over $50 billion of taxpayer money. There is still one major test left to see just how healthy GM is.
Who knew? Ally Bank is running all those TV ads belittling the “fine print” used by other banks. But as the Wall Street Journal 
