My demands

[SmileyRose]

1. Banks and "Wall Street" pay the taxpayers back every single penny before shareholders get a single penny in dividends.

2. Banks and "Wall Street" pay fees for the cash reserves they have "parked".

3. Small sales tax on every share traded and every share "earned" as stock options or changing hands in any way - even into a trust.

4. Non paycheck income and paycheck income taxed at the same rate and subject to the same withholdings.

5. Banks and "Wall Street" given direct credits for payback in #1 and #2 for every dollar in mortgage principle they write off for homeowners who are underwater on mortgages.

6. SEC that does it's fucking job.

7. Prosecutions, jail time and restitution required from the bad actors that created this shit.

8. Kill all the shit that makes Wall Street weighted toward institutional gamblers and against individual investors.

[Coyote_Bandit]

1. a tax on equity trades (#3)?

That may sound like a good idea but it is people who are going to be negatively impacted by the additional costs. It will have no effect on the bankers, brokers and investment houses. They will simply pass the cost along to the customer. And not all of those customers are rich folks. Some of those accounts are charitable funds, cemetery maintenance fuds, educational institution funds, college savings accounts, funds awarded or bequeated to folks who are disabled and not able to work, grannies life savings, etc.

BTW, the actual cost of trading is about one cent per share. But few customers know that. They pay a flat fee, or a commission or an asset management fee. Instituting a tax on trading will just give the financial industry an excuse to increase the costs - and customers already pay very high costs relative to the actual costs.

[Coyote_Bandit]

2. delete (dupe)

[truedelphi]

3. About your point number one -

A lot of the Big Money People will tell you that these monies were mere loans and that they were paid back.

A bogus claim if ever there was one.

For every dollar "paid back" with real money, there were rebates and sometimes even the ability to take out another loan! For example, when Wells Fargo bought out Wachovia, that "buy out" was paid for by tax rebates and the way WF managed its business "loss" column.

And then the nine to fourteen trillions of dollars that was loaned out by "our" Federal Reserve to the larger Investment And Financial People - they "paid it back" using investment papers of dubious value.

Which very well could be worth nothing.