I hope everyone reading this blog also keeps up with Matt Taibbi, one of my heroes. Taibbi just published another article in Rolling Stone, pointing out once again (and with lots of facts) how our government is so completely owned by the banking industry.
The article tells the ongoing story of a former manager at Chase who witnessed massive deliberate fraud there – part of the widespread fraud and corruption leading up to the economic crisis. As Taibbi puts it, “It’s theft on a scale that blows the mind.” But despite her offers to help the government go after these criminals, she found out that the feds were instead helping the banks cover it up.
I guess I am angry and disappointed by Eric Holder (who I’m sure acted with Obama’s full knowledge), but I’m not surprised. I’m more disappointed in the American people, who don’t demand that the criminals who committed fraud on a stunning scale, who stole trillions of dollars from Americans and caused the largest financial crisis in our lifetimes, were rewarded by being bailed out by our government and were even given big raises and bonuses. Yes, it pisses me off that Obama didn’t prosecute them. But it pisses me off more that we express our dissatisfaction with Obama by voting in people who want to give even more power and money to the Wall Street criminals.
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I can’t remember where I saw it, but recently I saw a chart that showed wage growth over the last 6 years.
While most industry wages were stagnate or decreased the top 2 gainers were the IT field and Financials. The IT sector, which if memory serve me was around 4% growth, was far outpaced by Financials which came it at a whopping 14.9% growth. At the opposite end of the spectrum was the automotive industry which had a decrease of like 13%.
Would anybody out there like to see a 15% increase in their wages over the same period?(and during a recession I might add) I believe it’s time to resurrect the OWS and give it a makeover to include more mainstream faces.
ohh, I forgot to mention that most of the growth in the markets was fueled by the Fed pumping 10’s of 100’s of billions into the market (without much if any government oversight).
So, reinstate Glass Steagall.