Tax China, Bankers' Pay to Bring Back Jobs

While Citigroup(C) Chairman Vikram Pandit pays new bank executives $5 million and $10 million a year with its share of the $2 trillion in taxpayer money ploughed into Wall Street by the Federal Reserve and TARP, as many as 3,000 of the 8,000 regional banks may disappear through failure or acquisition by larger brethren.

Washington provided Wall Street with taxpayer cash to monopolize banking. Now those banks are pushing down CD rates the elderly receive on savings, jacking up credit card fees, and setting aside credit for big multinationals that outsource more jobs than they create. Meanwhile, disappearing small banks have no cash to lend the small businesses President Obama say he favors to create jobs.

To fix small banks, Congress should use repaid TARP money and impose a 50% tax on bank compensation over $2 million a year -- paid now or deferred -- to create a Resolution Trust to purchase loans and securities from regional banks. That trust could work out the loans and securities over several years and return a profit to the taxpayers. Smaller banks would then have the funds to lend and stay in business.

Taxes on currency manipulators and bankers and a national policy to build fuel-efficient cars are radical departures from free market principles, but the nation is in crisis.

Deindustrialization is rapidly reaching the point of no return, and the ascent of China threatens Western democratic values globally.

Do Americans really want Beijing making the rules on human rights -- forget about trade -- in this century? If so, let China continue as banker to American decline.

Athens was a much more civilized place than Rome but in end the Greeks were enslaved by their more practical neighbors to the West.

“Deindustrialization is rapidly reaching the point of no return, and the ascent of China threatens Western democratic values globally.”

Fair tax removes corporate tax and replaces the tax with a one time tax at the point of purchase. It brings to the front hidden taxes built in to products.

Enact it and then stand back and watch the investment money flood into the USA. Another country will do this if we don’t.

Free trade with China, flawed energy policies and pandering to Wall Street are destroying American prosperity.

A major problem is pretending we have free trade with China, and pretending that we've had free trade with Japan since the 1950s and pretending that we have free trade with many other nations, particularly in Asia.

It's the highly successful Asian model for growth: gain maximum possible access to US markets, allow US firms minimum possible access to Asian markets, then lure US manufacturing facilities and jobs with cheap labor, then export everything possible to the US market.

The US has been allowing this for decades and these pretend free trade, pretend free market policies have racked up trillions in US trade deficits. And the nonsense that supposed lower consumer prices is worth it all is shown for the nonsense that it is by noting the growth in US government programs that support low wage earners, which can accurately be described as low wage support programs. And Obamacare is only the most recent.

The old tried and true formula for increasing profits - increase revenue and decrease expenses - also applies to government: increase revenue and decrease spending. But that will only happen when we stop exporting jobs and creating more and more expensive low wage support programs for those who don't earn enough to meet basic needs.

The US will never solve its budget deficit problems until it ends the pretend free trade, and adopts policies that grow jobs domestically and reduce the need for low wage support programs by government. (And it's pointless to engage in the fantasy that those programs can be ended without decent jobs that pay enough for lower wage earners to meet basic needs. Those programs will continue to grow, otherwise...)

Unfortunately, the Treasury used the Troubled Assets Relief Program to recapitalize Wall Street banks and trading houses,

And banks in general.

like Goldman Sachs(GSK_),

GSK is GlaxoSmithKline.

which then recorded big record profits in 2009 and paid record bonuses with taxpayer money in 2010.

Once they paid back their TARP loan, can we stop saying they're doing things with taxpayer money?

And let's ignore the $6 billion they paid in taxes in 2007. The $6.4 billion they paid in 2009. And all the taxes their employees paid.

Free trade with China, flawed energy policies and pandering to Wall Street are destroying American prosperity.

Oh wretch! Here I'd gone and printed out the whole thing for study and I hit that first line I wanted to give up. Yet you said to read the whole thing so I made it all the way through.

OK smart guy, now you can a mop and clean up the puke off the floor of my office.

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