Goldman Bonuses to Pay for Detroit’s Fall? Here Comes the Bank Tax Bill

By Washington logic, Wall Street will soon pay for Detroit’s demise.

That’s the subtext of a piece byThe Wall Street Journal’s Damian Paletta, Jonathan Weisman, and Deborah Solomonin today’s paper, which reports that President Obama will today unveil a proposal to Congress for a tax of $90 billion on 50 institutions over the course of a decade, citing White House officials.

The part played by large U.S. banks that engaged in reckless risk-taking, including Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), JP Morgan-Chase (JPM), and Bank of America (BAC), will make up for the fact that General Motors and Chrysler will not be paying a tax — the logic being that they were done in by the reckless risk-taking of Goldman et alia.

A few non-financials would, however, pay the tax, including General Electric (GE).

And yes, it would effectively be a tax on bonuses — as the Journal and the New York Post and others speculated on Monday. One White House officials suggested banks take the tax money out of their bonus pools, rather than pass it along to customers, the authors report.

Bank stocks are mixed in anticipation of the announcement, with Goldman off 97 cents, about half a percent, at $168.10, Morgan Stanley off 36 cents, or 1%, at $30.90, JP Morgan up 47 cents, or 1%, at $44.74, and BAC up 11 cents, or 0.7%, at $16.73.