Working Life

So, Wall Street got to really fuck workers once — when the greedy bastards who cratered the economy with their foolish games, they put millions of people into the streets, people who lost their jobs because of the greed. While not a single high-ranking financial leader is in jail, the greedy bastards are coming back for a second time to fuck workers — this time trying to screw them out of pensions.

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Hey, no big deal — you run a company rife with conflicts of interest, you help crater the economy, costing millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in wealth…and you keep racking up more and more money. Life is good for Lloyd Blankfein.

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Every decade or so, we get a new “gap”. You remember the “missile gap”? Now, we have the “pension gap” — the difference between what sits in pensions funds and what is owed to retirees. But, who caused that gap?

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My first reaction to AIG’s consideration of a suit against the government was like many people: what the fuck? You guys should all be in jail, not swimming along thanks to $182 billion in taxpayer bailout money. But, then, in retrospect, it makes sense.

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When I come back in my next life, I want to be a banker or a hotshot on Wall Street. Because it’s the kind of work where you can do anything you want, break any laws, never get punished and make a huge amount of money. And the best thing is: you make someone else pay for your fuck-ups. That is the upshot of the settlement reached today with the banks. Another day, another sham.

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This will be, for some, a tough one. But, if we are really to change the system, we have to be unsparing to people, no matter what political persuasion they come from.

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One of the great myths that created the seeds of the financial crisis was that the ratings agencies–Standard and Poor and Moody’s–where “independent”. What a crock–the ratings agencies gave positive ratings to the crummy debt securities that were at the heart of what led to millions of people losing their jobs and they have been the water boys for the financial elite who peddled this crap. Now, we have a conviction of S&P: Guilty in a court of law.

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So, it’s easy to capture our predicament today–though you’d never get that from the transcribers of press releases (formerly known as “journalists”). Here is is neatly summed up: we’ve been robbed, only little fish are being held accountable for relatively small crimes and, even more to the point, in a political rhetorical world where shareholders are revered, the shareholders are being left to pay the bill.

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Hey, Bank of America shareholder, how does it feel to have the executives deceive investors (in other words, lie), escape any personal responsibility for the lies, cause huge losses and, then, stick YOU with a bill for over $2 BILLION? Well, probably not a great feeling but, screw you, you are just an investor, not a coddled, overpaid executive who just got handed a stay-out-of-jail card.

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Wed Aug 29, 2012 at 07:30 PM EDT
Banksters Get Off Again: Citibank Pays Off Crimes, Robert Rubin Skates

by Tasini

Same old story. The crimes of the financial crisis remain, for the most part, unpunished-except if you are a shareholder of a financial institution who is paying the price for the misdeeds and crimes of the greedy, overpaid executives who destroyed the lives of millions of people. Today’s example: Citibank.

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Among the myths promoted by the traditional press–myths that hurt the entire country–is the “independence” of the ratings agencies. And that myth was one of the underpinnings of the financial crisis–the ratings agencies gave positive ratings to the crummy debt securities that were at the heart of what led to millions of people losing their [...]

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You don’t have to look further than the utterly pathetic game of repeated “stay-out-of-jail” cards handed the global banker elite to understand why people are pissed—whether in the U.S., Greece or pick a country. Time after time, the guys who cratered the economy, and robbed people of their jobs and wealth, are given a pass [...]

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   It would be an interesting exercise to add up all the dollars spent by the Justice Department prosecuting Roger Clemens and John Edwards–it’s got to be in eight figures easily–compared to the ZERO spent prosecuting Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, or for that matter, a whole host of his co-horts.    I mention Blankfein, [...]

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    In my search to find something positive among the rubbish cascading across our eyes, let us behold a small ray of positive action. Citibank’s CEO Vikram S. Pandit tried to stuff his pockets full of millions of dollars more in bank money. The shareholders were not buying it–and turned thumbs down on his proposed [...]

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   I’ve written a lot about the complete immoral insanity of the obsession over the phony debt and deficit "crisis"and the rush to impose austerity on the people when we really need much more public spending to employ the masses of people who are falling, falling, falling further behind. Well, truth is austerity is not [...]

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   On the face of it, it’s a good thing when the labor movement leverages the trillions of dollars–yes, that’s TRILLIONS–that sit in pension funds. It’s been a topic of debate for a long time. The question is: what do we get? Here is the example, via The Wall Street Journal: New York Gov. Andrew [...]

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