The Wall Street Journal’s blog “Deal Journal” reports that the 25 biggest publicly traded Wall Street banks and securities firms shelled out a record $135 billion in 2010 in pay and benefits to their employees.
The recovery is working well for some.
What think?
Actually — WE shelled out.
A good portion of that money came from the bailout.
Yes, “A good portion of that money came from the bailout.”
The REST of it was extracted from the money good, honest working folks have invested in their “retirement” accounts.
There are, of course, NO limits to how much the Wall Street wizards can pay themselves and each other, while reducing the “return” on our investments just as much as they want to reduce them.
There are, as well, no limit to the number of lives they can destroy and jobs they can force to move offshore in order that companies meet their demands for quarterly profits.
Wall Street, as it currently exists, represents nothing but a society of revenant vampires sucking the lifeblood out of the US economy and the life out of America’s average citizens and small-to-medium business people.
I can’t help but wonder whether we’ll do anything (which we have not, so far) to plug up the works these blood suckers use for that purpose before they engineer the next collapse with the full intention and expectation that we taxpayer’s (those of us who are NOT wealthy, of course) will open our children’s children’s children’s children’s wallets in order to pad the already overstuffed pockets of those who, having benefitted so massively from the last crash, felt free to cause another for fun and personal profit.
What I really think wouldn’t make it past the MinnPost review, so, to be far more polite than I actually feel, it’s beyond disgraceful. Nothing Lloyd Blankfein has done, or will do, justifies his salary or bonuses, and a good case could be made – ought to be made, in my view – that the Wall Street shysters that created the Great Recession ought to be in prison, not having their lackeys make reservations for dinner at a tony New York eatery to celebrate their even-more-obscene wealth. Much of it, of course, is just as Paul said – many of the dollars fattening their investment portfolios came from us.
Admirers of aristocracy will differ, of course.
That’s funny. Record pay on Wall Street, rising values for Picasso’s, and yet no budging in the jobs numbers. But I just heard the Talk of the Nation’ highly overrated host let stand a reference to trickle down economics as created under Reagan having proven itself as a viable economic theory.