Working Life

Today’s lesson is another chapter in why Detroit workers — regular people — don’t get treated like CEOs. Meaning, when someone else screws up, workers get the shaft. But, when the CEO screws up, no problem — he gets to keep a truckload of money. Though one trustee, thankfully, is not buying it.

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It’s either a very bad sense of humor or cluelessness but over at the swoosh, tax evasion has a weird name thing going on.

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I make it a habit of regularly bagging the transcribers of press releases (formerly known as “journalists”) for utterly failing to do their jobs, particularly when it comes to challenging the rhetoric of the so-called “free market.” So, today, is a day of rest ranting about the sad state of affairs among the denizens of the Fourth Estate. Because, hells bells, Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times has penned a devastatingly good piece about the most recent example of JP Morgan Chase getting slapped on the wrist for a pretty big piece of scamming the people.

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Among the many reasons the country would be better off if Bernie Sanders was president is that the man just refuses to deal in silliness. He wants the country to have a serious debate — and whether the next head of the Federal Reserve Board is a man or a woman, or the current president is more “comfortable” with one person or another running the Fed, is entirely irrelevant to Sanders. And so Sanders goes really wild — he invokes the two words that most people will not speak in this debate even though those two words are part of the Federal Reserve Board’s mission: FULL EMPLOYMENT.

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I can’t let Detroit go partly because there is so much to learn from the robbery that took place in the past and is continuing to this day. Today, let’s consider for a moment the price regular workers pay when something goes bad versus the price CEOs never pay when something goes askew. It’s a telling story about the deep corruption of the system.

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Really? The White House is saying to Detroit basically “take a hike” when it comes to a bailout — but, don’t worry, pension holders in Detroit, you have a defender…the Republican Michigan attorney general. This is bizarre and troubling.

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Robert Rubin is like that turd that just won’t flush away. You know, no matter how many time you keep pressing the lever, it sticks around. That’s Robert Rubin. And here he is again, swirling around the toilet bowl of corrupt politics, of financial elite arrogance, mouthing off when, in a just world, he’d either be in jail, without a job or, at least, irrelevant.

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The absurdity of the debate about who should be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is NOT in the debate about Larry Summers versus Janet Yellin. Nope. It’s in the questions not being asked.

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Every day, if you pay attention, we can get a teachable moment. Today’s teachable moment gives us this: if you are a CEO of a bank, a CEO who makes millions of dollars, and you are in financial trouble — trouble of your own making — you can ring up the White House and, presto, the coffers of the Federal Reserve open up to extend you loans in the billions of dollars. On the other hand, if you are a worker making a modest income, or you are now retired, and you live in a city ravaged by the so-called “free market”, a city that files for bankruptcy, and you ask the White House for help, you are told, “sorry, buddy, you are on your own.”

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I think the White House has been brilliant just this once. The nonsense about Larry Summers being the leading candidate to replace Ben Bernanke as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is an elaborate ploy designed to do one thing: avoid real questions about the Fed.

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