The first one's a Whoopee! The Obama administration in a fit of unaccustomed dedication to justice is fixing to slap a $120 billion fee on the nation's huge banks to partially reimburse we taxpayers for TARP losses. The bare outlines are clear enough: the too-big-to-fail banks whose asses were saved by hundreds of billions of taxpayer losses are expected to announce not only record profits for 2009--what bank could not profit borrowing money from the Fed at zero percent interest?--but also correspondingly huge bonuses for CEOs and executives. So with the coming announcement we poor strapped taxpayers, who have been savaged by massive unemployment, foreclosures, and a myriad of woes connected with what the too-big-to-fail banks visited upon us, will finally get some glimmer of pay-back. Not nearly enough, but the Wall Street fat cats are already screaming. And you can bet that their tools in Congress are going to do the same.
The second one's a we-shoulda-seen-this-coming. Guess who is going to become a regular commentator on Fox Faux News? Right, boys and girls, our favorite bubble-headed dingbat, the former governor of Alaska, and still the favorite of Tea Party dunces everywhere: Sarah Palin. Listen, I think any commentary on this would just be superfluous. Is this a surprise? No. Will this boost Fox Faux News ratings? Yes. Will this confirm for the thousandth time that this woman knows next to nothing about anything? Of course. Will it help to fatten her already bulging coffers from the sale of her ghost-written bestseller book? Of course. Is there justice in the world? Hell, no.
Update I: Palin debuted on Fox , as a "news analyst" (I cannot help but pause and just savor the unspeakable irony at work here) with another right-wing immortal, Bill O'Reilly. According to reports, she was, to put it kindly, less than glib and way south of insightful, and he was his usual horse's ass self. I'll bet the Nielsen ratings went through the roof.
Update II: I just heard on NPR in an interview with Timothy Geithner, that the fee being charged the piratical scoundrels of Wall Street is now $90 billion over the next ten years. And of course this is just fine with him. It's "fair." In view of the fact that the big banks are going to pay out $50 billion in executive bonuses this year, this doesn't seem all that burdensome, does it? This is what happens when they've got you by the short and curlies, brothers and sisters.
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