The big banks already underpaid the FDIC for 10 years. The idiotic “our interest from previous fees can pay the insurance premiums” fee vacation from 1996-2006. They owe money and interest to the FDIC for years they took off from paying FDIC dues, even without considering exorbitant bonuses. Congress enabled this risky practice aka allowing banks to under pay for an insurance product for about a decade.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. advanced a proposal Tuesday to penalize banks for risky compensation practices, despite public opposition from other federal banking regulators.

The FDIC, which collects fees from all banks to repay depositors in failed banks, is considering a plan to impose higher fees on banks with compensation practices that the agency regards as encouraging reckless pursuit of short-term profits without sufficient regard for the risk of long-term losses.

The agency’s board voted Tuesday by a narrow 3 to 2 margin to seek public comment on a preliminary version of the proposal, the first step in a process likely to take at least a year.

via FDIC advances plan to penalize banks for risky practices – washingtonpost.com.

Dangerous securities practices were being devised that increased risk and necessitated some reevaluation of how the FDIC, Fed, SEC and Treasury insured, regulated, evaluated and funded our financial institutions. This along with some sort of progressive risky, big bank tax structure proposed by the President would help to fund the deficit shortfalls and help the US Government deal with the tons of bad debt it has taken on from the big banks to clean their private balance sheets (think Fannie, Freddie, Treasury).

Or maybe we should just trust the banks and the molesting invisible hand of the free market.