Thursday, January 21, 2010

The Idiocy & Greed of Wall Street

Here's a bit from an article in Slate by Daniel Gross that gets my dander up:
The big banks are considering challenging President Obama's proposed tax on very large banks and financial institutions in court as unconstitutional. Let's see if I have this right. The Federal Reserve deciding unilaterally, without public debate, to assume hundreds of billions of dollars of financial companies' liabilities, spent hundreds of billions to buy mortgage-backed securities and potentially expose taxpayers to massive losses: That's totally constitutional. Congress passing a law suggesting that a small portion of the bailed-out financial industry, which is still benefitting from massive government subsidies, pay a fee for running huge balance sheets: That's unconstitutional.
I've got a simply solution: demand all those free dollars back from the banks! Tell the Federal Reserve to stop using taxpayer dollars to keep interest rates low (cheating savers) which fattens the banks profits! Get behind the push to encourage people to support community banks and credit unions. Start looking for ways to change the laws in every way possible to make life more difficult for the Wall Street banks and the "greed is good" bankers. In short, I say declare war on the big banks!

What bugs me is the fact that the banks have decided that their employees worked "so hard" in 2009 that they will give them a 50% pay increase. I don't know of any industry that behaves this way. (Oh, and by "employees" we aren't talking about janitors, secretaries, and lowly clerks. No siree! These big increases are reserved for the fat cats on the top. You know, the ones who were busy spending millions refubishing their offices as they made decisions that destroyed the economy.)

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