Floyd Norris documents the latest outrage, that Goldman Sach is looking at buying tax credits from Fannie Mae.

The idea here is that Fannie Mae is losing money, and is federally owned now, so it can’t use the tax credits, so it sells them to GS for something like 80¢ on the dollar, screwing the taxpayer.

Goldman, you may recall, was saved with taxpayer money when the panic spread last year. A naïve person might think such a company would see a patriotic virtue in paying taxes.

Fannie Mae is currently a ward of the government. So this boils down to a proposal to pay Uncle Sam perhaps 15 cents to avoid paying 20 cents to Uncle Sam. The gall involved in even proposing such a thing is awesome.

It also points out one reason companies pay so little in taxes. These tax credits exist as a nonbudgetary way of stimulating investment in low-income housing. It would be a lot cheaper for the government to simply subsidize that, but instead it offers tax credits so there is no “expenditure” for foes of big government to criticize.

Seriously, we need someone to move in and break heads, but the Obama/Geithner/Summers troika has no interest in challenging the excesses of Wall Street.