Working Life

   I am not shocked in the least by this story: Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers paid their executives largely in stock, and that stock lost most or all of its value when those companies collapsed. Many people on Wall Street say these examples help make the case that pay incentives were not what caused […]

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There is no recovery for Main Street, no matter how many people are on their knees looking for "green shoots". It is phony rhetoric–and even the left-wing Financial Times grasps the problem.   The paper’s front-page article today is headlined "Goldman and Citi highlight divide", with the article’s subhead reading, "Wall Street recovering faster than […]

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   The financial collapse a year ago was also, in my mind, a further sign of the bankruptcy of the traditional media. Even though the rising real estate and stock market bubble were obvious for a number of years, The New York Times rarely took on the greed in Wall Street, treating, particularly in the […]

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   There have been a number of instances in the past few months that show that the financial industry has not learned its lesson and needs to be saved from its own short-sited behavior. Banks have pushed back against new rules on credit cards and mortgages. There is a coordinated effort to scuttle or badly […]

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   I often ask the question: why aren’t more of the bankers and Wall Street financiers going to jail for the financial collapse they created with their manipulations and thirst for greed? Not only are they not serving time, but they still have their jobs–while millions of others lost their jobs because of the bursting […]

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   I’m going to be on CNBC today at 1 p.m. to discuss this article in today’s NYTimes: The rich, as a group, are no longer getting richer. Over the last two years, they have become poorer. And many may not return to their old levels of wealth and income anytime soon. For every investment […]

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   In today’s installment of The Audacity of Greed, we bring you the story of Andrew Hall: In a few weeks, the Treasury Department’s czar of executive pay will have to answer this $100 million question: Should Andrew J. Hall get his bonus? Mr. Hall, the 58-year-old head of Phibro, a small commodities trading firm […]

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   I remain astonished–perhaps I shouldn’t be–about the extent to which the people who destroyed the financial system still have jobs. It is truly a comment on the emptiness of the rhetoric of the "free market" ideologues and the business world, who demand accountability, efficiency and profitability–except when it comes to their own actions. After […]

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   I’m getting increasingly pissed off about the debate about health care, and the larger obscenity that our states are collapsing, services are being cut, millions of people are losing jobs–and the richest Americans just can’t step out and say, "yes, we should pay more to have a decent society". If you want to see […]

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Today brings in stark relief the economic chasm in America: the Depression is here, if you measure what real people are going through, but, on Wall Street, the party continues as, in Marie Antoinette style, financial executives reap millions while the rest of the people grasp for crumbs.   Today, David Leonhardt has an excellent […]

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