The Rich Have Stolen The Economy

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Rich-Have-Stolen-The-E-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-091016-883.html


The Rich Have Stolen The Economy
Paul Craig Roberts

Bloomberg reports that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's closest aides earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other Wall Street firms. Bloomberg reports that none of these aides faced Senate confirmation. Yet, they are overseeing the handout of hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to their former employers.
The gifts of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money provided the banks with an abundance of low cost capital that has boosted the banks' profits, while the taxpayers who provided the capital are increasingly unemployed and homeless.

JPMorgan Chase announced that it has earned $3.6 billion in the third quarter of this year.

Goldman Sachs has made so much money during this year of economic crisis that enormous bonuses are in the works. London Evening Standard reports that Goldman Sachs' “5,500 London staff can look forward to record average payouts of around 500,000 pounds ($800,000) each. Senior executives will get bonuses of several million pounds each with the highest paid as much as 10 million pounds ($16 million).“


In the event the banksters can't figure out how to enjoy the riches, the Financial Times is offering a new magazine--”How To Spend It.” New York City's retailers are praying for some of it, suffering a 15.3% vacancy rate on Fifth Avenue. Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that retail sales adjusted for inflation have declined to the level of 10 years ago: “Virtually 10 years worth of real retail sales growth has been destroyed in the still unfolding depression.”

Meanwhile, New York City's homeless shelters have reached the all time high of 39,000, 16,000 of whom are children.

..more..

that we are heading towards a science and intellectual economy and we'll no longer have a manufacturing economy. I wonder if everyone, every average joe and jane, will be a scientist and inventor. Or will they be required to make flying saucer balloons in their backyards to try to get back on a reality show to earn a little cash. Where does a science and invention economy, where the inventions are manufactured off-shore, leave the average person?

and who makes all the money for those sideshows,namely the corporations that produce them.

Democrats simply won't put up with this sort of thing. They represent the People.

:rofl: or:cry:

:spray: :evilgrin:

would that be? :shrug:

:rofl:

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

That's the problem. Appeaser corporate bootshiner Dems are worse than Republicans, because with Repubs, you at least KNOW you're going to be screwn should you vote for them.

First the excuse was that the pubs were in power. Then from 06 to 08 it was that the Dems didn't have a majority. Now, the truth comes out. The political process of both parties caters to the ones that donate the most to the campaigns, doing the right thing never even enters into the equation.

Lost our futures--and what it will take to win it back.)

This book was written and presented in full on C-Span long
before our present crisis. Easy read

In the best of times, they've been forced to share their riches through regulations and higher taxes. The middle and lower classes have only benefitted when these powers are reigned in and forced to pay their employees decent wages or provide health care...none of this is volunteered, it's had to be mandated.

For the past 30 years we've lived with "trickle down" that assumes the rich can only horde so much or spend so much. We're finding out there's no limits to either and neither has benefitted the masses. Time to reregulate...either enforce laws on the books or reinstate those that were wiped away...especially during the years of rushpublican control.

be remembered that these people are among the neediest, most impoverished in our ever-more affluent society.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/15/goldman-sachs-record-bonus-pot

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/16/goldman-sachs-bankers-bonuses

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/18/will-hutton-heather-mcgregor-banks?commentpage=2&commentposted=1

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/17/banks-tax-avoidance-bailout

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/18/rbs-bonuses-banks-bailout

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/15/goldman-sachs-announces-profits-boom

:shrug: Who's gonna stop us? Them????

K&R

:shrug:

We are at a point of destruction, not just depression. We need an FDR, and you are our only hope, given Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Please be another FDR. Please.

that the very ones who caused this crisis got bailed out to the tune of billions and are now doing very well, thank you, while the ones who did the bailing are worried about their next meal. The pubs did an incredible job of turning this fury that would be completely normal and channeling not against the natural enemy, but into 'tea party' nonsense.

I think the general trend that this article refers to, although I am way too angry to read it and am sick of the whole situation, is the increasingly large segment of the "economy" that is taken up by the financial/investment/brokers/Wall Street paper-shuffling and movement of money, which actually contributes nothing. Sen. Tom Harkin had a hearing on this a while ago, on its increasing share of the entire activity of the economy, and how "banking/investing" as a group used to account for some 20-25% per cent of all wealth and G.D.P., etc., during the 1940s-1960s, I think it was, (when the economy was healthy, based on union membership, manufacturing, local small business, etc.), and now it is huge--over 50% or something, I believe. Meanwhile, manufacturing, the real basis of a good, self-sustaining economy, has been sent to other countries, and is dying here.

The point is that it is getting more and more consolidated, as during the 1920s, the "recovery" affects nothing because it is only this same group of rich corporate investors; recessions get worse because the rest of the real economy has been dismantled and there is nothing to rebuild, etc. When these people get power and control, they start imposing more and more absurd and destructive measures--cutting all corporate taxes, rules, cutting all distinctions between business activities (so individual corporations can just swallow up everything), etc. They buy whole industries and supplies, only to take them off the market, get a monopoly, and hike up pirces whenever they want to cut supplies, etc. If regulated Wall St. stocks are taxed, then they invent and move all activity to unregulated markets that cannot even be tracked, where now nothing is taxed--hedge funds, spot markets, offshore, etc., etc.

This is why we now have the propaganda that "the economy" has "recovered," yet it is only the completely shrunken, consolidated Wall St. investor area of it--nothing else is doing anything but worsening (unemployment, bankruptcies, debt, foreclosures, etc.). Oh, if only Obama knew! Obama can't possibly know anything about this, just the way Bush didn't know about Katrina and Rita, right? It's all so secret.

excellent comparison, unfortunately..

http://themiddleages.tripod.com/feudal_system.htm

But this time, the courts of the crime-son kings have up to the nuclear firepower to remain on top...

Geithner is being tarred with guilt by association, and the crisis more complicated that we understand. I do know the too big to fail haven't reconciled their troubled assets, and those bonuses should have paid them off instead. One thing to say out of the woods, propel some positivism, another to be dishonest and continuing to be leeches. Much of what was done paid of global debts, whih we never want to consider as necessary, but we were banksters to others as well.