If you're sick and tired of the unaccountable banksters paying themselves record bonuses after their actions helped usher in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, you should support the Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee. Heather Booth of Americans for Financial Reform does and explains why you should too:

Americans for Financial Reform, and our more than 200 coalition partners, applaud President Obama’s proposal for a Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee as an important step in protecting taxpayers and ensuring that Wall Street is held accountable. The fee the President proposes will help taxpayers recoup some of the money used to bail out the big banks and financial institutions, and it reaffirms the basic principle that the biggest lenders cannot gamble recklessly and then expect taxpayers to pay their debts.

The President is right, that to get our economy back on track, we need that principle—and accountability and fairness-- to be the ground rule for the financial markets.

This is a good first step - but, more needs to be done. Much more. Heather Booth has a good idea:

Passage of a Financial Speculation Tax (FST) is another important piece of such reform. An FST, in addition to raising $100- 150 billion a year would also rein in Wall Street by discouraging excessive speculation.

Robust financial reform, including an independent CFPA, exchange trading of derivatives, and rigorous, democratic, and accountable systemic risk management is also vitally important to meet these goals.

If you really want to send a message to the banksters who messed up this economy, discourage them from making risky investments. We've seen what happens when risky investments go bad: the global economy is brought to it's knees. Millions lose their jobs. Millions are forced out of their houses. People suffer.

The Financial Speculation Tax (FST) will cause the banksters to think twice before risking the entire global economy on the equivalent of a game of roulette again. Let's get it passed.