Feedback: No Sympathy for Freeloaders

To the Editor:

Change your focus ["Tax Aims at Big Banks But Could Hit Others," Jan. 20]. Consider this tax as a fee, like deposit insurance. The big banks have had a 50 year subsidy by not having to pay insurance premium/fee/tax on all their liabilities, like community banks basically do (because small banks have small wholesale funds). So, this new tax/fee is paying for past and future liability fees. All small banks pay similar to FDIC.

Oh, you say, but the wholesale liabilities are not insured? They sure the hell were come crunch time. Big banks are freeloaders.

Then you need to bring in a discussion of what parts of the shadow banking system will still avoid this fee. Now theres a group of freeloaders who the taxpayers bailed out &hellp;you may recognize some of them, like money market mutual funds?

Sam Moyer
Chairman
Heritage Bank
Aurora, Neb.

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