George Rebane

• Windfall profit taxes on bankers
• Green Banks fund green jobs

We are now assured that the feds will slap an extra tax on “windfall profits” that banks make from future risky investments.  These are the kinds of government induced investments that inflated the last bubble of outlandish real estate prices and sophisticated (beyond comprehension) hedge products which finally blew up and presented us with today’s recession.  As we all know, the feds (including the Fed) leaped in there to bail out the big banks.  No harm no foul.

But after a little thought, someone in the White House said, ‘Sumbich, there’s a pony in this deal if we can only cut ourselves in on the action.’  And cutting themselves in is now in the works.   To the sheeple it looks like – oh yeah, now the government is really going to get ugly as a bear’s butt on all those fat cat bankers.  But to someone with two brain cells to rub together, it is what it is – a bright green light for the bankers to get into exactly the same kind of shoot-the-moon deals that got us in trouble the last time.  The bankers are smiling all the way to their outlandish bonuses.  Why? cause Uncle Sam just said ‘Go and spin that wheel.  We’re partners now and we’ll split the profits.  And if the wind don’t blow our way, that’s OK cause there’s more bailout money where that last batch came from.  Yee Haw!!’

Meanwhile, the rest of us should strap some duct tape around our wallets.

Them folks at the Center for American Progress are something else.  Partnering with another group of financial wizards at the Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute (hold the laughter, please), they came up with something to write home about.  Together, they figured out that if the government writes a check each year for $150 billion, they could see their way to “create” and sustain 1,700,000 new jobs doing all kinds of neat green things.  They call it the “Green Bank” and, with nary a blink, claim the “Green Bank can ensure (that) the clean-energy manufacturing sector is able to overcome several challenges, including securing access to capital when prospective lenders are reluctant to provide financing to manufacturers producing clean-energy technology.”

Well no kidding, Red Ryder! (‘kidding’ is a place holder for a stronger sentiment)  It is indeed a challenge to talk someone “reluctant” and sane out of money to fund a boondoggle that pays $88,000+ annually to keep a body working on stuff for which there is no market.  So the Green Bank concept dispenses with the sane investor/lender problem, and goes directly to the government where there is no such impediment.  CAP simply reminds the feds that markets are no matter since the feds got the guns and can coerce the customers to buy whatever crap is produced from the ‘investment’, which, by the way, is also paid for by the same customers.  They pay for it twice, such a deal!

Remember the Whiffenpoof Song?  OK, all together now, ‘We’re poor little lambs who have lost our way, Baa, baa, baa? …’