It makes a lot sense to tax the heck out windfall bank executive bonuses, and that’s what France and Great Britain are doing.

According to a story over at the Huffington Post, France is going to follow Britain’s lead in implementing a one-time 50 percent tax on bonuses given to bank executives.

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece written by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the duo wrote:

We have also learned that when crises happen, taxpayers have to cover the costs. It is simply not acceptable for them to foot the bill for losses in a deep downturn, while institutions’ shareholders and employees enjoy all the gains as the economy recovers.

…

[W]e agree that a one-off tax in relation to bonuses should be considered a priority, due to the fact that bonuses for 2009 have arisen partly because of government support for the banking system.

But what’s the US doing to curb the unchecked greed running rampant in its banking system? Nothing.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Goldman Sachs decided that executives won’t get cash bonuses this year but stock instead.

Bowing to calls for restraint in tough economic times, Goldman said that its most senior executives would forgo cash bonuses this year. Instead, the 30 executives will be paid in the form of long-term stock — an arrangement that means they will not get big year-end paydays, but one that could turn out to be enormously lucrative if Goldman’s share price rises over time.

So they won’t get a huge pile of cash today, just an enormous pile of cash later when they sell their stock.

President Barack Obama

President Obama continues to make the same mistake over and over again. From bankers, to members of Congress and even the American people, Obama keeps hoping everyone will just get along and find common ground.

While Obama keeps waiting for everyone do to the right thing, unemployment continues to go up, small businesses are struggling or failing, people are dying from lack of health care, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and bailed out investment bankers are rolling in taxpayer dough.

It’s time for Obama to stop his audacity of hope campaign – what we need is action, leadership and some asses kicked (I’m looking at you Goldman Sachs and AIG).

Perhaps critics of candidate Obama were right when they said he lacked experience. He’s been in the White House for nine months and he’s accomplished nothing.

Health care reform continues to flounder in Congress.

The war in Iraq is still sucking the US Treasury dry and snatching the lives of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

In Afghanistan, Obama is thinking about sending more troops, but he appears to be hemming and hawing over that decision.

When the banking industry, which created the current financial mess we’re in thanks to laissez-faire regulation, was on the ropes Obama didn’t take that opportunity to force regulation down their throats, but rather he handed them billions and billions of taxpayer money and hoped that they’d play nice and be cool with regulatory changes later. Wrong.

Before Congress started debating health care reform, the president should have laid out his requirements for a bill he would sign. Obama should have started out with single-payer and made the case for it. There’s a good argument to be made for single-payer, but Obama didn’t even try. Instead, he left it all up to Congress to run wild with and boy did they. Now we’re looking at heavily compromised bills that will likely result in a lot of people paying too much money for health insurance that doesn’t cover anything. Thanks, but no thanks.

And what has he done to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Nothing. We can’t win either of these wars because there is no definition of victory. No one has ever conquered Afghanistan, and neither will the US. And what’s the exit strategy in Iraq? Hope?

Obama’s hope machine has run out of gas. Hope is great, we all need a little bit of it from time to time, but it’s no excuse for inaction. This is politics. It’s partisan.

The time for leadership is now, because let’s face it, pretending that partisan politics is something that can, or should, be avoided is no recipe for success. Obama needs to stop his wishful thinking. Conservatives and liberals will not march on Washington, DC hand-in-hand singing Kumbaya – it’s not going to happen. Wake up or step aside in 2012 to make room for a real leader.

Goldman Sachs

Nobody outside of Wall Street elites and the White House inner sanctum knows what’s really going on with the alleged economic recovery. What you do know is that Goldman Sachs is going to be handing out $23 billion in bonuses this year and record profits. You also know that without the hundreds of billions of taxpayer money, Goldman Sachs wouldn’t be rolling in piles of cash while its competition was left to fail (e.g. Lehman Brothers). And if you’ve been reading the newspaper, you know the Obama administration doesn’t care.

Frank Rich wrote about this today in his column “Goldman Can Spare You a Dime.” Rich compares Goldman Sachs to the early 20th century giant Standard Oil – known as “The Octopus.”

When Roosevelt set out to fix what was wrong with the economy that lead to the Great Depression, he didn’t hobnob with America’s first billionaire John D. Rockefeller as Obama has with Goldman Sachs bigwigs. If he had, Rich wrote, palled around with the Standard Oil titan, it’s unlikely the monopoly would have been broken up and the oil company would still have a stranglehold on the economy – sucking out money wherever it could sink its tentacles.

President Barack Obama

But Obama is clearly a friend to Goldman. His administration is filled with Goldman shills like Timothy Geithner and the newly appointed man in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement unit Adam Storch – a former Goldman executive.

For more on this important topic, read Rich’s column

Goldman Sachs

Most people, including myself, have no idea what financial institutions do. Whatever it is they do do, it sounds like a sweet gig, especially now that any competition that may have existed before the crash of 2008, is now gone. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are running wild with taxpayer money, no regulation and no competition.

The New York Times reported today:

Titans like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are making fortunes in hot areas like trading stocks and bonds, rather than in the ho-hum business of lending people money. They also are profiting by taking risks that weaker rivals are unable or unwilling to shoulder — a benefit of less competition after the failure of some investment firms last year.

After the bailout, it’s obvious that for Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, no matter what they do, the government will not allow them to fail. It’s the old joke, tails I win, heads you lose.

It might be time to stop pretending that we live in a country that believes wholeheartedly in free market economics – the people might believe in it but the corporations running the country clearly don’t (e.g. health insurance companies, energy companies and banks). There’s nothing free about certain banks pillaging the US Treasury of hundreds of billions upon hundreds of billions of dollars while others are left to go bankrupt.

And as for the workers, real unemployment is 17 percent and going up. I guess the recession is over. Right?

Paul Krugman economist

Paul Krugman won a Nobel Prize in Economics last year and he’s apparently one of the only economists who knows what’s going on with our economy. In today’s column he takes on the Federal Reserve and the old-school mentality that interest rates should go up at the same time unemployment is increasing.

If the Fed does raise interest rates, and unemployment continues going up, the possibility of another Great Depression is real. Krugman believes we’ve avoided a depression, but the signs are there that maybe we haven’t. The economy is teetering on the edge of total failure, with Goldman Sachs firmly in charge, it certainly should give us all pause.

Read Krugman’s column “Misguided Monetary Mentalities”