{"id":7789,"date":"2010-01-12T07:00:11","date_gmt":"2010-01-12T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=7789"},"modified":"2010-01-11T23:03:09","modified_gmt":"2010-01-12T04:03:09","slug":"oh-thats-what-you-meant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=7789","title":{"rendered":"Oh, That’s What You Meant."},"content":{"rendered":"

When Barack Obama expressed concern over the deficit, and pledged to cut it in half, I suppose there were some taxpayers that actually thought that implied a reduction in government spending.<\/p>\n

Nope. What he meant was he was about to invent another tax and wrap it in fabricated righteousness.<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama may propose a fee on financial-services companies<\/a> as a way to fulfill a vow on cutting the budget deficit in half, administration officials said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite the fact that by some miracle the government is well on it’s way to recovering much of the infusions made last year in the interest of preventing further disaster, Obama wants more. How dare the financial sector recover from a crisis seeded by the government and admittedly germinated by the avarice of a few bad apples and actually start turning a profit again!<\/p>\n

Banks repaid the U.S. $165 billion last year, letting the government recoup about two-thirds of its total investment in the banking system through the $700 billion financial rescue, according to a U.S. Treasury Department report released today.<\/p>\n

The Troubled Asset Relief Program also collected $12.9 billion in fees, dividends and interest, the Treasury said. So far, the U.S. has made an 8 percent return on its bank investments, a Treasury official told reporters.<\/p>\n

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said he expects the government to be repaid for the funds put into banks at a profit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can’t have it both ways.<\/p>\n

A few banks exhibit risky behavior while the government looks the other way. Risk is realized. The government bails the banks out just as the banks expected, thereby rewarding them by mitigating the risk normally realized by this behavior.<\/p>\n

No one should be surprised that some banks are picking up where they left off, and the government is just as culpable as the banks.<\/p>\n

Public sentiment has turned against last year\u2019s government rescue of the financial-services industry. Almost two-thirds of Americans believe bailing out the banks was a bad idea, a Bloomberg National Poll taken Dec. 3-7 showed.<\/p>\n

Just over half of respondents said banks should be subject to stricter regulation and 31 percent would allow troubled banks to fail.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Americans are pissed off – and they should be – but not just at the banks, rather at the bureaucrats that saw fit to reward risky behavior with taxpayer dollars.<\/p>\n

…and ironically now seek to create yet another tax to repair the damage caused by the misuse of taxpayer dollars in the first place.<\/p>\n

One must never underestimate a liberal’s creativity in finding new ways to confiscate capital and turn something into nothing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Barack Obama expressed concern over the deficit, and pledged to cut it in half, I suppose there were some taxpayers that actually thought that implied a reduction in government spending. Nope. What he meant was he was about to invent another tax and wrap it in fabricated righteousness. President Barack Obama may propose a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":228,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-v-socialism","category-liberal-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/228"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7789"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7793,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7789\/revisions\/7793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}