Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee

See: Financial Crisis.

Remember 2007 and 2008? Yeah...the Great Recession, as they call it. Well, Prez-at-the-time Barack Obama proposed the Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee, which would have made the banks pay back the government...and taxpayers...for all of that relief money.

After the bubble burst in late 2007, the government had two choices: save the banks to save the people with government intervention, or let the banks lie in the bed they made for themselves, leaving people out in the cold, by not intervening. They chose to intervene, saving people, but also the big banks in the process, using TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) money.

The Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee would have been a bank tax on about 50 banks, making them pay back their TARP money by about $9 billion per year for 10 years. Since the Great Recession wasn’t an accident (big banks took excessive risk and did a lot of lying and stuff), the argument is that they should pay for the risk and damage it caused. The money from the Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee would have gone into government coffers in general, repaying the government (and the public) rather than refilling TARP’s coffers.

Unfortunately though…the Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee never became a thing, as the proposal was not taxed. Sad face.