Washington - President Barack Obama lashed out on Thursday at "obscene" corporate bonuses and proposed a fee to raise $90bn from major banks to recover "every single dime" used to rescue Wall Street.
"We want our money back and we are going to get it," Obama said, terming a massive government bailout of the banking industry as "distasteful" though necessary, adding it left the sector with a heavy duty to taxpayers.
"My determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people," Obama said.
The plan, if approved by Congress, would raise $90bn from 50 big financial institutions over 10 years, including foreign banks operating in the United States, but is already facing opposition from the financial sector.
Obama blamed big banks and finance houses for causing the economic crisis with high-risk lending practices and a blind rush to enrich themselves.
"Firms took reckless risks in pursuit of short-term profits and soaring bonuses triggering a financial crisis that nearly pulled the economy into a second Great Depression," Obama said.
The administration unveiled the tax as Wall Street firms gear up to announce huge bonuses for top executives, a move sure to inflame the public as Americans face 10 percent unemployment and deep economic misery.
The title of the initiative, the "Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee," makes it clear the administration is placing blame on the sector for the worst economic meltdown since the 1930s Great Depression.
Yet Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president, insisted that "we're not trying to pick a fight" with banks.
"It's a very solid solution to make sure taxpayers are made whole," she told MSNBC television.
The Obama administration has repeatedly said it would try to recoup the full cost of the $700bn Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) which was used to bail out banks, and also tapped to aid crippled automakers.
A senior US official said the program, which has seen some money already paid back, would now effectively leave the government around $117bn out of pocket.
"It is in many ways offensive for those at our major financial institutions to suggest they can today afford excessive, often outlandish bonuses for their top executives" but cannot repay taxpayers, the official said.
But the Financial Services Roundtable, which represents 100 top financial services firms, said the fee was "strictly political".
"Two-thirds of the TARP investment from banks has already been repaid with a large profit to the taxpayer," said the Roundtable's president and chief executive Steve Bartlett.
"This proposed tax will do nothing more than stifle economic recovery and encumber more pressing concerns, such as covering new regulatory costs."
- AFP