New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo released a study today telling us all what we already knew, and what the bloggers have been telling the world for years now. The banks, mired in toxic debt, logging staggering losses and on the public dole for billions still somehow managed to pay out billions more in bonuses. You get bonuses for losing money in that industry. What a job! They engineered the greatest financial boondoggle in history, required trillions in Government and Fed funds to keep the whole system from collapsing, and then sat down and wrote themselves nice fat bonus checks.
The Street.com reported: "Citigroup and Bank of America's Merrill Lynch, two firms that remain in the crosshairs of the bonus debacle, got the brunt of Cuomo's criticism. He notes that Citi distributed $5.33 billion while Merrill paid out $3.6 billion in bonuses. Those two firms lost a combined $54 billion last year, and required government bailouts totaling $55 billion."
When you read things like that you have to wonder what kind of men rise to the top of this business, all prim and proper in their three piece suits. They live lives of comfort and extravagence, some making more each week than the average annual salary of most Americans. Like Wall Street itself, they are completely disconnected from the daily realities of what it is like to struggle to make a real living. All their millions come to them largely unearned, generated by a few keystrokes on a computer. Some garner their big bonus money by devising digital schemes to trade stocks a few milliseconds before everyone else gets to see the ticker, the so called "front running" of the market that should be patently illegal.
So Cuomo's report comes as no surprise. And attorney general or not, my bet is that nothing much will come of it beyond some nasty press for a few news cycles. No one will be prosecuted. The system will continue on as it always has. The wealthy men that run it, and by so doing run this country, will simply say "tisk, tisk," and go about their business of hiding losses, reporting phoney profits, and bilking the public trust of billions more. These men at the top of the financial pyramid really have no fear of firebrands like Cuomo. Oh, occasionally one of their own is thrown to the sharks, like Bernie Madoff, but by and large the culture on Wall Street remains unrepentant, unregulated, and as ruthless as ever.
How did we get here, staring into the abyss of yet another economic collapse, and one to possibly rival or even eclipse the Great Depression of the 1930s? Is it all the fault of extravagant “consumers,” the millions of Betas and Deltas in the soma ridden shopping malls of our Brave New World? Or perhaps we should blame those further down on Society’s ladder of privilege, the “sub-prime” Gammas and Epsilons who were unable to escape the Alt-ARM reset traps the bankers set for them in their “home loan.”
No. We must look higher up if we are to find the real culprits. The real damage to Society did not occur in the copper gutted neighborhoods of Cleveland and Detroit, but in the glitz and opulence of Wall Street, with John Thain’s $80,000 area rugs and $1400 trash cans the accepted norm. The shiny new corporate jets that the CEOs of GM, Ford, and Chrysler used when they first flew to Washington to beg for money are another clue, along with the $50 million addition to Citigroup’s corporate jet fleet after that bank received over $50 billion in free taxpayer money. The half million dollar party AIG threw after it received its $90 billion was yet another clue. Or perhaps we should look to the $13 million dollar estate of ex-Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld, quietly sold to his wife for a sum of a hundred dollars to make sure it stays in the family… or to the millions in diamond studded jewelry Bernie Madoff tried to slip into the mailbox to his relatives and friends.
No, my friends. If we want to point the finger of justice at anyone, we must look first to the very top, where our Alpha-Plus executives sit in their mansions and multi-million dollar office suites—the men who have brought some of the largest and most powerful institutions in the nation to the brink of bankruptcy through their excessive greed, incompetence, lack of prudence and foresight, and downright corruption. Now they are looting the public purse as well, heedlessly, and well protected from any negative effects of their wrongdoing by their multi-million dollar salaries and golden parachutes.
"Tisk, tisk."
The Rothchilds said it well enough years ago: "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws."
The Street.com reported: "Citigroup and Bank of America's Merrill Lynch, two firms that remain in the crosshairs of the bonus debacle, got the brunt of Cuomo's criticism. He notes that Citi distributed $5.33 billion while Merrill paid out $3.6 billion in bonuses. Those two firms lost a combined $54 billion last year, and required government bailouts totaling $55 billion."
When you read things like that you have to wonder what kind of men rise to the top of this business, all prim and proper in their three piece suits. They live lives of comfort and extravagence, some making more each week than the average annual salary of most Americans. Like Wall Street itself, they are completely disconnected from the daily realities of what it is like to struggle to make a real living. All their millions come to them largely unearned, generated by a few keystrokes on a computer. Some garner their big bonus money by devising digital schemes to trade stocks a few milliseconds before everyone else gets to see the ticker, the so called "front running" of the market that should be patently illegal.
So Cuomo's report comes as no surprise. And attorney general or not, my bet is that nothing much will come of it beyond some nasty press for a few news cycles. No one will be prosecuted. The system will continue on as it always has. The wealthy men that run it, and by so doing run this country, will simply say "tisk, tisk," and go about their business of hiding losses, reporting phoney profits, and bilking the public trust of billions more. These men at the top of the financial pyramid really have no fear of firebrands like Cuomo. Oh, occasionally one of their own is thrown to the sharks, like Bernie Madoff, but by and large the culture on Wall Street remains unrepentant, unregulated, and as ruthless as ever.
How did we get here, staring into the abyss of yet another economic collapse, and one to possibly rival or even eclipse the Great Depression of the 1930s? Is it all the fault of extravagant “consumers,” the millions of Betas and Deltas in the soma ridden shopping malls of our Brave New World? Or perhaps we should blame those further down on Society’s ladder of privilege, the “sub-prime” Gammas and Epsilons who were unable to escape the Alt-ARM reset traps the bankers set for them in their “home loan.”
No. We must look higher up if we are to find the real culprits. The real damage to Society did not occur in the copper gutted neighborhoods of Cleveland and Detroit, but in the glitz and opulence of Wall Street, with John Thain’s $80,000 area rugs and $1400 trash cans the accepted norm. The shiny new corporate jets that the CEOs of GM, Ford, and Chrysler used when they first flew to Washington to beg for money are another clue, along with the $50 million addition to Citigroup’s corporate jet fleet after that bank received over $50 billion in free taxpayer money. The half million dollar party AIG threw after it received its $90 billion was yet another clue. Or perhaps we should look to the $13 million dollar estate of ex-Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld, quietly sold to his wife for a sum of a hundred dollars to make sure it stays in the family… or to the millions in diamond studded jewelry Bernie Madoff tried to slip into the mailbox to his relatives and friends.
No, my friends. If we want to point the finger of justice at anyone, we must look first to the very top, where our Alpha-Plus executives sit in their mansions and multi-million dollar office suites—the men who have brought some of the largest and most powerful institutions in the nation to the brink of bankruptcy through their excessive greed, incompetence, lack of prudence and foresight, and downright corruption. Now they are looting the public purse as well, heedlessly, and well protected from any negative effects of their wrongdoing by their multi-million dollar salaries and golden parachutes.
"Tisk, tisk."
The Rothchilds said it well enough years ago: "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws."
