For American taxpayers, now on the hook for some $145 billion in housing losses connected to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, that amount could be just the tip of the iceberg.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the losses could balloon to $400 billion. And if housing prices fall further, some experts caution, the cost to the taxpayer could hit as much as $1 trillion.

Two things are clear: Taxpayers don’t want to foot the bill, and Fannie and Freddie, taken over by the government in 2008 to stanch the financial bloodletting, need a major overhaul.

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The fact that Obama actually says ‘So we can recover every dime of taxpayer money’ goes far beyond Stupidity!

The banks will just pass on more fees on our banking services to compensate for the taxes they pay.

President Barack Obama, fresh from a win on a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulations, on Saturday urged Congress to take up his proposal for a $90 billion, 10-year tax on banks as the next step in reform.

Obama wants to slap a 0.15 percent tax on the liabilities of the biggest U.S. financial institutions to recoup the costs to taxpayers of the financial bailout.

“We need to impose a fee on the banks that were the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer assistance at the height of our financial crisis — so we can recover every dime of taxpayer money,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Obama, who is in Canada to attend gatherings with leaders of the world’s biggest economies, also used the address to welcome a deal by congressional negotiators on a historic rewriting of U.S. financial regulations.

Obama hopes to tout the changes as a model for other countries at the Group of 20 summit on Saturday and Sunday.

“I hope we can build on the progress we made at last year’s G20 summits by coordinating our global financial reform efforts to make sure a crisis like the one from which we are still recovering never happens again,” he said.
Reuters

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Almost $11 for a pack of cigarettes? It might soon become a very real reality in many stores in New York City.

The cigarette tax in New York would jump $1.60 a pack under a tentative deal struck between Governor David Paterson and state government leaders.

The proposal is part of an emergency budget bill which is due for a vote on Monday.

In the city, which levies steep taxes of its own on tobacco products, a pack of cigarettes would come with a tax of $5.85, making it the nation’s first city to break $5.

The Paterson administration hopes the proposal would generate $440 million in revenue this year, which would be a help close the state budget gap which is estimated to be over $9 billion. Despite the dire budget situation there is no guarantee that the emergency bill will pass after Republicans threatened to vote against a bill that includes tax increases.

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President Obama has a solution to the Gulf oil spill: $7-a-gallon gas.

That’s a Harvard University study’s estimate of the per-gallon price of the president’s global-warming agenda. And Obama made clear this week that this agenda is a part of his plan for addressing the Gulf mess.

So what does global-warming legislation have to do with the oil spill?
Good question, because such measures wouldn’t do a thing to clean up the oil or fix the problems that led to the leak.
The answer can be found in Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s now-famous words, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste — and what I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

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Buried in the entrails of the reconciliation bill (H.R. 4872) that resulted in the passage of healthcare reform, is this insidious provision: Net investment income defined as “gross income from interest, dividends, annuities, royalties, and rents … attributable to the disposition of property” will be assessed 3.8% “Unearned Income Medicare Contribution”.

BusinessWeek estimates, “Overall tax rates on income from interest, annuities and royalties would rise to as much as 43.4%.” By taxing investment income, the new law launches an assault on capital formation and growth. It is also an ambitious reach by the federal government, beyond the current capital gains tax, into revenue sources heretofore reserved to the local communities: personal property.

Defenders of the tax will venture that it applies above the threshold income level of $250,000, therefore hits only the rich; but the fact remains that without indexing or other protections, the new tax may affect more Americans over time, just as Congress’ neglect will subject 30 million this year to the alternative minimum tax — originally intended for only 155 taxpayers.

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