Bank Tax: Brown barking up the wrong tree

When statists sniff an opportunity to extract more tax from their subjects they usually find an excuse quite quickly. Gordon Brown certainly thinks that the solution to all of our problems is to invent a new tax. So it is no wonder that taxing banks is his solution to the global credit crunch. How that is supposed to absolve us from problems such as excessive borrowing, mismatch of maturities in balance sheets or simply bad lending is not explained to the public. In addition we have to expect the worst when it comes to disposal of the loot: will the tax money end up in some sort of reserve fund? or is it a pay-as-you-go scheme like the national 'insurance' or unemployment 'insurance' schemes that we are so familiar with?