The Chancellor, Alistair Darling introduced a one of tax levy of 50% on bank bonuses this year, to individuals, this a populous measure to tackle what the public would see as the benefits of the stimulus or the bank of England's £200 billion quantitative easing or the huge bailout funds rather than their own banking efforts.
What Barak Obama is offering is something rather different.
The tax will be 0.15% point fee of covered liabilities, to banks with more than $50 billion in assets.
This new tax is structured to tackle the most riskiest activities, targeting activity in the wholesale money markets, rather than the insured deposits in the retailed banks.
The Deputy of Bank of England flagged up this policy in Tokyo last May, where he stated "governments could claim back the costs (financial costs of bailout), if any, from an increased 'insurance' levy on the banking system over a period of years after the crisis had clearly passed."
He went on "(the) cost of the banking system failures could fall on the banks shareholders than on the public purse".
Governments are very timid when it comes to taxing the banking sector, they are very weary of banks moving to countries to where there is a less declaratory approach, what President Obama has done, is to say, the investment arm of the banking system should be treated the same as insured deposit banks, this approach will allow other western governments to follow suit.
For me, the principal should be, the tax payer saved the banking system, now the banks must pay back every penny.
We cannot go back to business as usual for the banks, the banks have proved they cannot be trusted, the banks know that government as the lender of last resort, so shareholders need to insure their futures and not the pockets of the tax payer.
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