And so it all comes home to roost; facing the need to raise revenue and the massive bonuses being doled out on Wall Street, the government has proposed a fee on the top 50 or so financial institutions that would recover the expected losses from TARP. Those losses will likely hit somewhere around $117 billion.

The new fees can be seen as part of the backlash against the culture of Wall Street. Whether you think the fees are right or not, we can all agree that the industry has brought this on itself. We've made the point previously that an industry in this sort of situation is much better at policing itself than waiting for regulation. But the perception has been that it's back to business as usual on Wall Street, except for PR campaigns aimed at making bonuses more palatable. That's a simplification of course, but Washington never really got the idea that the industry was contrite enough. 

For more:
- here's an article

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