The banks are mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore. They paid back their TARP, which they didn't need anyway, and every dime they're making now is because of their own brilliance, not taxpayer subsidies. So they can pay themselves whatever they want and the hell with anyone who has a problem with that!

That's a common attitude on Wall Street these days.

And the part about the TARP being paid back is true (and it's surprising how fast it happened). And the bankers certainly aren't doing anything that any good capitalist would do when offered free money and gifts: Take them. So this isn't about bankers being bad people and other taxpayers being good people. (It's about government policy).

But that bit about how banks aren't being subsidized anymore is just a crock of sh$%.

Reggie Middleton at Zero Hedge has an excellent rant on this subject, in which he distills the 10 ways banks are still getting rich and drunk at a taxpayer subsidized bar:

What was the value for bank charter, to get cheap access to the Fed's funds? did they pay back this value yet? No! How about the payment of interest on the banks' excess reserves at the Fed. Have the banks repaid that yet? No! The Fed and the Treasury have purchased hundreds of billions of dollars of Agency debt, Agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and related securities through Treasury purchase programs. Have the banks paid back the capital behind those purchases yet? No! How about the Term Auction Facility? Has the capital behind the benefits of that program been paid back? No! Then there is the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF), has this been paid back? No! Do you remember the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF)? Have the funds behind that been paid back? No! What about the PPIP? No! Hey, there's the Foreign Exchange Swap programs (the currency swap lines, that saved not only our banks but out banks facing counterparties who were short on dollars), has that been paid back? No! There's the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF), have the funds behind that been paid back? No! Most importantly, the opportunity cost of ZIRP [Zero Interest Rate Policy], which hurts those who do not speculate (or have not speculated) with near free money! How do you pay that back to grandma and her .017% CDs?

The last one's a killer. David Stockman estimated this week that our zero interest rates have taken $250 billion from the pockets of savers and put it into the pockets of Wall Street.

Low interest rates have been used for years to stimulate economic activity and secretly recapitalize banks. So they're nothing new. But they are a huge subsidy that hurts savers and rewards banks (right now) for doing nothing more than buying Treasuries. So at the very least it's disingenuous for Wall Street to argue that it's through being subsidized.

And that's before you get to the 9 other gifts and subsidies Reggie Middleton outlines >