High Street banks should be stopped from paying cash bonuses of more than £2,000, shadow chancellor George Osborne is expected to say.

In a speech to the City, he is to say lending banks should be allowed to pay "significant" bonuses only in shares.

The Tories claim this could create up to £20bn of new lending that would free up credit for businesses and consumers.

But the Treasury accused Mr Osborne of "hypocrisy", adding the Tories had not backed plans to support businesses.

Many believe big bonuses prompted excessive risk-taking at banks which contributed to the financial crisis.

Last week, the Centre for Economics and Business Research said City bank bonuses would hit £6bn this year, up from £4bn in 2008, because of rising profits and less competition.

US billionaire Warren Buffett's investment firm has revealed new stakes in Nestle and Exxon Mobil.

Berkshire Hathaway said it held 3.4 million American depositary receipts - which represents shares in foreign companies - of Nestle, worth $144.7m.

It also reported owning 1.28 million shares in the oil giant Exxon Mobil, valued at $87.6m.

Stock picks by Mr Buffett are watched closely as he is considered to be one of the world's greatest investors.

The disclosures were made in a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.

Berkshire Hathaway also revealed that it had nearly doubled its stake in Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer.

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see toon at top...

Last week, Forbes magazine published what the top U.S. corporations paid in taxes last year. "Most egregious," Forbes notes, is General Electric, which "generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion." Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS:

Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas.

Mother Jones' Adam Weinstein notes that, despite benefiting from corporate welfare in the U.S., Exxon complains about paying high taxes, claiming that it threatens energy innovation research. Pat Garofalo at the Wonk Room notes that big corporations' tax shelter practices similar to Exxon's shift a $100 billion annual tax burden onto U.S. taxpayers. In fact, in 2008, the Government Accountability Office found that "two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005."

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/04/06/outrageous-exxon-mobil-paid-no-income-tax-in-2009/

WARREN Buffett bagged nearly $10 billion in interest, fees and dividends on the $5 billion lifeline he extended to Goldman Sachs in 2008.

The huge sum came after Goldman got the green light from the Federal Reserve to buy back $5 billion of preferred shares.

Goldman was among the banks that won government approval to return money to investors after undergoing a new round of so-called stress tests to determine their financial stability.

Within minutes of learning that they passed, 19 financial institutions that were forced to cut shareholder payouts to conserve capital during the financial crisis announced they would boost dividends.

Redeeming Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway stake has been a priority for Goldman because of the 10 per cent dividend that made Buffett nearly $500 million a year.