"Stop Wall Street's Economic Rampage"

[amborin]

Over the past year, Wall Street’s excess has helped push the unemployment rate to epic levels and created millions of foreclosures. Yet the rules of the financial road remain unchanged. As 2009 draws to a close, it’s astonishing that so little progress towards financial reform has been made.

President Obama, Congress and federal regulators have not been tough enough on the nation’s financial elite.......the government has committed about $14 trillion in bailout funds to save the banking system without demanding much of anything in return. Goldman Sachs and other big banks are now planning to pay giant bonuses that come straight from taxpayer giveaways rather than invest that money in socially constructive banking.

snip

The major banks are even spending our bailout money to lobby against reform. When President Obama called a meeting for leaders of the nation’s largest banks to scold them for their lobbying, the heads of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup didn’t even bother to show up.....

It’s easy to see why the bank execs are so indifferent, Rothschild argues, even to the president. Now that almost all of these banks have repaid the loans they received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Obama has no negotiating leverage and the bankers know it. Even though it represents just a tiny fraction of the $14 trillion bailout, TARP was the only program that attached any strings to that money. Prior to those TARP repayments, Obama could have demanded that banks do more lending to help the economy, work harder to keep troubled borrowers in their homes—or face executive compensation restrictions or other penalties.

....many of the same regulators who helped bring about today’s economic disaster are still in power.

snip

Bernanke, who was recently named person of the year by Time magazine, failed to rein in reckless mortgage speculation, predatory lending or excessive compensation packages. Nevertheless, President Obama has appointed him to another term.

http://www.theittlist.com/ittlist/ind/5620/weekly_audit_stop_wall_streets_economic_rampage/

Top Campaign Contributors:

University of California $1,591,395
Goldman Sachs $994,795
Harvard University $854,747
Microsoft Corp $833,617
Google Inc $803,436
Citigroup Inc $701,290
JPMorgan Chase & Co $695,132
Time Warner $590,084
Sidley Austin LLP $588,598
Stanford University $586,557
National Amusements Inc $551,683
UBS AG $543,219
Wilmerhale Llp $542,618
Skadden, Arps et al $530,839
IBM Corp $528,822
Columbia University $528,302
Morgan Stanley $514,881
General Electric $499,130
US Government $494,820
Latham & Watkins

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638



meanwhile:

Even as experts hail the economic recovery underway, new research shows that American workers are stuck with flat or declining wages even as their productivity soars. (Hat tip to the AFL-CIO Now Blog.) What's going on here?

As The Los Angeles Times reported this week:

Workers... are fueling a surge of productivity in the U.S. economy. Employee output per hour jumped 8.1% in the third quarter this year, the largest gain since the third quarter of 2003.

But these bustling laborers are also a big reason why companies won't be rushing to hire new staffers any time soon. The brutal downturn has forced firms across the economy to do more with fewer hands; many have found they can manage just fine for the time being.

And, not-so-surprisingly, employers in this "buyer's market" for employees are also taking advantage of workers' fears of losing their jobs to work them harder without paying them more. The economics of day laborers and sharecroppers has now been extended into mainstream workplaces. The bosses' essential message: "Take it or leave It, Buster. There are plenty of people out there eager to get your job.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/