A new gilded age. that is exactly what the conservative and Karl Rove's agenda called for. They have achieved their cherished dream. We now have a gilded age again. Just like in the late 1800s when workers had no rights and worked 7 days a week for paltry sums. When a few controlled the country. It was rule by the rich.
Teddy Roosevelt challenged these people and their monopolies. He was the one man who could stare down JP Morgan and not flinch. And he destroyed their monopolies and opened the way for better times for the average person. His cousin, FDR, of course set in place the great programs that provided security and made possible our thriving middle class until now.
The tributes to Sanford I. Weill line the walls of the carpeted hallway that leads to his skyscraper office, with its panoramic view of Central Park. A dozen framed magazine covers, their colors as vivid as an Andy Warhol painting, are the most arresting. Each heralds Mr. Weill’s genius in assembling Citigroup into the most powerful financial institution since the House of Morgan a century ago.
Name Leo J. Hindery, Jr. Age 59 Assets $150 Million Source Cable TV Current Job Manager, Private Equity Fund Philosophy “I think there are people, including myself at certain times in my career, who because of their uniqueness warrant whatever the market will bear.”
His achievement required political clout, and that, too, is on display. Soon after he formed Citigroup, Congress repealed a Depression-era law that prohibited goliaths like the one Mr. Weill had just put together anyway, combining commercial and investment banking, insurance and stock brokerage operations. A trophy from the victory — a pen that President Bill Clinton used to sign the repeal — hangs, framed, near the magazine covers.
These days, Mr. Weill and many of the nation’s very wealthy chief executives, entrepreneurs and financiers echo an earlier era — the Gilded Age before World War I — when powerful enterprises, dominated by men who grew immensely rich, ushered in the industrialization of the United States. The new titans often see themselves as pillars of a similarly prosperous and expansive age, one in which their successes and their philanthropy have made government less important than it once was.
“People can look at the last 25 years and say this is an incredibly unique period of time,” Mr. Weill said. “We didn’t rely on somebody else to build what we built, and we shouldn’t rely on somebody else to provide all the services our society needs.”
Those earlier barons disappeared by the 1920s and, constrained by the Depression and by the greater government oversight and high income tax rates that followed, no one really took their place. Then, starting in the late 1970s, as the constraints receded, new tycoons gradually emerged, and now their concentrated wealth has made the early years of the 21st century truly another Gilded Age.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/business/15gilded.html?ex=1342152000&en=b9361c0993b4502c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
