Center for Media and Democracy has this up at PR Watch.org.

From the site:

These banks enjoy an implicit government guarantee that has been quantified by economists as a hidden taxpayer subsidy that disadvantages smaller banks. Bloomberg recently pegged this subsidy at some $84 billion,

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The Brown-Vitter bill wants the banks to be ready to give themselves a bailout when there is another shock to the financial system. The bill significantly raises the amount of high-quality (equity) capital that the big banks must hold – foreign banks operating in the United States included. Community banks would stay under the current rules, mid-sized and regional banks would be required to hold eight percent in capital to cover their assets, and megabanks – institutions with more than $500 billion in assets – would be required to meet a new 15 percent capital requirement, virtually double their current requirements.

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Ab-so-freaking-lutely.

If you click on the Bloomberg link, the question of the year:  Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion Per Year?

From Bloomberg:

The top five banks — JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. – – account for $64 billion of the total subsidy, an amount roughly equal to their typical annual profits (see tables for data on individual banks)

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Now, these banks wouldn’t be getting these NICE dividends because of campaign donations and lobbying, now would they…?  Nah, we *know* they are too honest, too upstanding, too ethical to do that…right…?  Pfft.

When I clicked on the massive bailouts to foreign banks, as well link, the site wasn’t that informative, and that is something I would reeeeallly like to know…how much are we paying out for other countries’ banks??

The bill is supposed to force the banks’ hand:  they either come up with the capital to cover their assets or they start divesting their mega corporations into smaller banks, which is what they should have done immediately after the crash in ’08.