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"We want our money back, and we're going to get it." Those were the tough-talking words from US President Barrack Obama that sent the American banking community into a tailspin as he hit out at the payment of “obscene” bonuses.

“My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed," declared Obama. "And my determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people, who have not been made whole, and who continue to face real hardship in this recession. If these companies are in good enough shape to afford massive bonuses, they are surely in good enough shape to pay back every penny to taxpayers.”

Later Obama hit out at the “audacity” of those who have criticised his plans. "Like clockwork, the banks and politicians who curry their favor are already trying to stop this fee from going into effect," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. "We're not going to let Wall Street take the money and run. We're going to pass this fee into law.”

A high price

If approved by Congress, the tax would force about 50 banks, insurance companies and large broker-dealers to collectively pay roughly $90 billion over 10 years. The tax would be levied on total assets, minus a type of capital considered high quality, such as common stock, and disclosed and retained earnings.

The 10-year assessment on bank liabilities—dubbed the Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee—would cost the nation's top six banking companies - Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo  -  a cool $1 billion a piece.

As the announcement was made, leading bankers hit back, suggesting that banks will pass on the cost of the tax to their customers which in turn could damage the wider economy.  "Using tax policy to punish people is a bad idea," said Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase. "All businesses tend to pass their costs on to customers."

But the former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker , who chairs the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a panel of outside advisers set up at the start of the Obama administration, said bankers needed to grit their teeth and get on with it. “It’s not unfair to say that these big institutions that have benefited one way or another have got to carry part of that burden.  It’s just a question of how we do it,” he said.  "It's not an unreasonable response, given the fact that [Obama's] got to do something.”

Europe not set to follow suit

The tax would also have an impact beyond the US as its scope covers subsidiaries of foreign banks such as Deutsche Bank and Barclays, which did not get direct US federal aid but benefited from other rescue programs. European political leaders were seemingly in no mood to match Obama's tough stance on the bonus issue despite US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warning: "We are going to see if we can encourage policymakers in other important financial centers to do something similar."

That call seems unlikely to be met with much enthusiasm. "The tax we put in place on bonuses along with Britain is the most efficient response to the French system," said France's Economy Minister Christine Lagarde while Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters that her country had already  "conducted banking rescue in a much more extensive form. We also levy considerable fees for the benefits we make available to banks.”

In the UK there were indications that Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Chancellor Alistair Darling are at loggerheads over what tack to take with the US approvals. Brown argued that the UK and the US are not that far apart in terms of policy. "What we are trying to do is make sure that we do not pay anything - and this is the same as Obama - for the rescue of the banks,"  he told a conference of the centre-left Fabian Society.

Chancellor Darling was considerably more robust as he insisted the US plans were not on the table for the UK. “The Americans are doing something different,” he said

But the British Bankers' Association (BBA) welcomed the Obama plan as a "levelling of the playing field” after previously fearing that the UK tax on bonuses would lead to firms moving staff to other countries.  "The US has moved up to the playing field that we are already on," BBA chief executive Angela Knight said. "These are two distinctly different situations. The US has a deficit that it wants banks to meet. In the UK we are paying more and we started paying earlier and UK taxpayers will get back more than they contributed, which I think is only right."