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Economy
In reply to the discussion: STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Thursday, 25 October 2012 [View all]Demeter
(85,373 posts)5. Obama Can Smoke Out Mitt: Call for Breaking Up the Biggest Banks, and Resurrecting Glass-Steagall
By Robert Reich
President Obama should propose that the nation's biggest banks be broken up and their size capped, and that the Glass-Steagall Act be resurrected.
It's good policy, and it would smoke out Mitt Romney as being of, by, and for Wall Street and not on the side of average Americans.
It would also remind America that five years ago Wall Street's excesses almost ruined the economy. Bankers, hedge-fund managers, and private-equity traders speculated on the upside, then shorted on the downside in a vast zero-sum game that resulted in the largest transfer of wealth from average Americans to financial elites ever witnessed in this nation's history.
Most of us lost big including over $7 trillion of home values, a $700-billion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, and continuing high unemployment. But the top 1 percent have done just fine. In the first year of the recovery they reaped 93 percent of the gains. The latest data show them back with 20 to 25 percent of the nation's total income just where they were in 2007. The stock market has about caught up to where it was before the crash. The pay and bonuses on the Street are once again sky-high. So are the pay and perks of top corporate executives. The Forbes list of richest Americans contains more billionaires than ever. And the tax rates of the top 1 percent are lower than ever courtesy of their armies of lobbyists...
DREAM ON BOB!
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Private Insurers Have Cost Medicare $282.6 Billion in Excess Payments Since 1985
Demeter
Oct 2012
#4
Obama Can Smoke Out Mitt: Call for Breaking Up the Biggest Banks, and Resurrecting Glass-Steagall
Demeter
Oct 2012
#5
This stealing has been going on for so long, hasn't everything been stolen?!!
DemReadingDU
Oct 2012
#29