The Banks Should Pay Bonuses, But....

...they should pay them to the government.

I am being totally serious about this. The banks are not in a position to make money because of their financial acumen. They are in a position to make money because the Bush Administration stepped up to the plate and saved them from their own folly.[1] If the Bush Administration had not proposed the TARP bailout program (and if the Congress had not enacted it), mot of the large banks in this country would have failed.[2]

The point is this: The largest banks exist only because we, the American taxpayers, through the Department of the Treasury, saved their asses. The bonuses that the banks feel that they can pay should be in the form of checks payable to the Treasurer of the United States.

[1] Yes, I said something complementary to the Bush Administration. Get over it.
[2] Of course, our economy and the overall global economy would have then imploded in a way that would have made this current recession look like a dream of good times, a prospect that was so terrifying that it made George Bush and Dick Cheney start channeling FDR.