As you continue to digest your Thanksgiving meals, remember that there are the fortunate and the unfortunate. In America, that means that the fortunate are the CEOS of Wall Street and the unfortunate are housing tenants who are losing their homes thanks to the greed of the very CEOS on Wall Street.

    First, we learn this from The Wall Street Journal (though one has to question why this story is buried in the day-after T-giving paper):

As U.S. foreclosures soar, renters — especially in small apartment buildings and single-family homes — are paying a high price for their landlords’ financial troubles. Across the U.S., thousands of people are being evicted.

Renters are particularly vulnerable now for a couple of reasons. As lending standards were relaxed in recent years, more people snapped up properties that they rented out, or partly rented out. When they couldn’t make their mortgage payments — sometimes because their adjustable-rate mortgages reset to higher rates — the properties ended up in foreclosure. In most places in the U.S., that voids tenants’ leases.

Unlike larger apartment buildings owned by commercial enterprises, homes and small multifamily properties typically aren’t run by management companies. Banks, which aren’t equipped to handle utility and water bills, maintenance and insurance requirements, want to sell foreclosed property as soon as possible, and often that means getting rid of the tenants.

    Second, Paul Krugman lets loose with a salvo today on "Banks Gone Wild". Referring to a recent Fortune magazine cover entitled "What Were They Smoking?", Krugman writes:

But another part of the answer lies in what hasn’t happened to the men on that Fortune cover — namely, they haven’t been forced to give back any of the huge paychecks they received before the folly of their decisions became apparent.

Around 25 years ago, American business — and the American political system — bought into the idea that greed is good. Executives are lavishly rewarded if the companies they run seem successful: last year the chief executives of Merrill and Citigroup were paid $48 million and $25.6 million, respectively.

But if the success turns out to have been an illusion — well, they still get to keep the money. Heads they win, tails we lose.

Not only is this grossly unfair, it encourages bad risk-taking, and sometimes fraud. If an executive can create the appearance of success, even for a couple of years, he will walk away immensely wealthy. Meanwhile, the subsequent revelation that appearances were deceiving is someone else’s problem.

If all this sounds familiar, it should. The huge rewards executives receive if they can fake success are what led to the great corporate scandals of a few years back. There’s no indication that any laws were broken this time — but the public’s trust was nonetheless betrayed, once again.

    Yes, the CEOs cash their checks–money made by stepping on the bodies of a lot of innocent people.