Main Street

The Elizabeth Warren Rap

Making the rounds, complete with miniature horses:

Tags: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren, financial reform, Wall Street

Wall Street Bonuses to Rise

Reuters:

Incentives at financial firms should rise from 2009 levels but remain below the record payouts of 2007, according to compensation consultant Johnson Associates.

Average compensation at investment and commercial banks is set to rise for the second straight year, while payouts at asset managers should rebound from a 2009 trough, the report said.

I’m torn between defensive sarcasm—“Of course Wall Street bonuses should rise this year! I can’t think why not, can you?”—and crawling under a rock and not reading the news for a few days.

Tags: Wall Street

Shocker! Bailed-Out Bankers Got Huge Bonuses

In the waning days of the Bush administration, and before the implementation of restrictions on some executives’ pay, the highest paid bankers at 17 of the firms bailed out by the Bush Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) also got bonuses totaling $1.6 billion in the period from October 2008 to February 2009.

Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration’s special master on executive pay, issued a report today identifying the 17 banks, many of them among the nation’s largest, following an inquiry into compensation at all firms receiving TARP funds. The report does not include specifics on the amounts paid out at any of the banks.

NPR reports:

At a news conference on Friday, Feinberg stressed that the firms did nothing illegal, but that their actions reflected “bad judgment” that was “contrary to the public interest.”

Later, President Obama, speaking briefly at the White House, said the review was meant to put firms on notice “that continued to pay out lavish bonuses” as they received government assistance.

The inquiry focused on the five month period during which banks received TARP money but were not yet subject to the new compensation oversight provisions. During those five months alone nearly 3 million American workers had their jobs taken from them by the Great Recession caused by Wall Street and the Bush administration’s failures.

Of the 17 banks identified, 6 have not yet repaid the TARP funds. NPR provides a list:

Here are the 17 firms that Feinberg says made ill-advised payments. Those that have not yet fully repaid taxpayer bailouts are listed in bold:
* American Express
* AIG
* Bank of America
* Boston Private Financial Holdings
* Capital One
* CIT
* Citigroup
* JPMorgan Chase
* M&T Bank
* Morgan Stanley
* Regions Financial
* SunTrust Banks
* Bank of New York Mellon
* Goldman Sachs
* PNC Financial Services Group
* U.S. Bancorp
* Wells Fargo

Tags: banks, bonuses, TARP, Wall Street

Lessons We Failed to Learn in 1928

Robert Reich in The Nation:

Wall Street’s banditry was the proximate cause of the Great Recession, not its underlying cause. Even if the Street is better controlled in the future (and I have my doubts), the structural reason for the Great Recession still haunts America. That reason is America’s surging inequality.

Consider: in 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation’s total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America’s total annual income But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income reconcentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928—with 23.5 percent of the total.

Apparently we didn’t learn anything at all from the Depression. Only fifty years later:

But starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It increased the cost of public higher education and cut public transportation. It shredded safety nets. It halved the top income tax rate from the range of 70–90 percent that prevailed during the 1950s and ’60s to 28–40 percent; it allowed many of the nation’s rich to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax and escape inheritance taxes altogether. At the same time, America boosted sales and payroll taxes, both of which have taken a bigger chunk out of the pay of the middle class and the poor than of the well-off.

It makes one wonder why we bother to study history at all. Unless we’re willing to engage in stern regulation and address the structural problems, this sort of economic devastation will continue to occur.

Containing the immediate financial crisis and then claiming the economy was on the mend left the public with a diffuse set of economic problems that seemed unrelated and inexplicable, as if a town’s fire chief dealt with a conflagration by protecting the biggest office buildings but leaving smaller fires simmering all over town: housing foreclosures, job losses, lower earnings, less economic security, soaring pay on Wall Street and in executive suites.

Precisely. The “small people” are left holding the bag, while Wall St. and the banks rake in the big pay and bonuses. Again.

Tags: financial crisis, Great Depression, Wall Street

Working America Shows Up at the Showdown

Never mind the rain, yesterday Working America was out at the Showdown on K Street:

And this was a really cool float done by another group (not sure who to credit):

Tags: financial reform, Wall Street

K Street Showdown

It’s starting:

Congress is poised to vote on Wall Street reform—the most important to our financial system in decades. We are taking our message “Good Jobs Now! Make Wall Street Pay” to K Street, the power corridor in Washington, D.C., where Big Bank lobbyists plot to kill real financial reform and peddle corporate influence on Capitol Hill.

AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler will lead a large contingent of working families and union staff today, May 17, as we join with our partners from National People’s Action, Move On, SEIU and others to rally and call out the lobbyists for the Big Banks.

Watch it live starting at 11:45:

Tags: financial reform, Wall Street

Keeping the Pressure on Wall Street

One of the many groups at last week’s March on Wall Street was the Coffee Party, which made this video. Check out the strong Working America representation.

You can take action at Not Your ATM.

Tags: financial reform, Wall Street

Huge March on Wall Street: “Good Jobs Now!”

Chanting “Good Jobs Now! Make Wall Street Pay!” and “They Got Bailed Out! We Got Left Out!” more than 15,000 union members, unemployed workers, community activists and progressive citizens jammed the streets of Lower Manhattan yesterday to march for good jobs and Wall Street reform.

Before leading the huge crowd in a March on Wall Street AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the rally that the big banks had crashed the economy, put us 11 million jobs in the hole, and that it’s time they paid to restore American jobs.
(photo at right by Will Fischer)

Working America members, supporters and organizers were on hand. And everywhere you looked there were signs telling Wall Street “I Am Not Your ATM“.

The event marked the single largest jobs rally since the onset of the Great Recession, and capped a week of actions nationwide.

The huge rally heard from speakers including New York unionists, teachers, students and progressive religious leaders — each expressing their outrage that while 15 million Americans are unemployed, and millions more have lost their homes, it’s back to business as usual for the big banks.

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous told the rally:

this is the time to take back America from the Big Banks. He said while money can buy votes, money can’t vote and all the newly registered voters in the 2008 election will make a difference in 2010.

Kim and Jamison were part of a Working America contingent on hand from Philadelphia.

More photos from the Wall Street Showdown:

Tags: financial reform, Good Jobs Now, Make Wall Street Pay, March on Wall Street, Wall Street

Keep Up the Pressure for Wall Street Reform

Yesterday afternoon, as expected, every Republican in the Senate (and Democrat Ben Nelson) voted against beginning public debate of financial reform. But while such votes have killed a lot of bills in recent years, this time Harry Reid is playing hardball:

Last night, after Republicans voted to sustain their filibuster of Wall Street reform legislation, Reid held an open quorum, forcing Republicans to return to the Senate floor, and then set the stage for revotes–to be held today and tomorrow–forcing the GOP to go on the record repeatedly opposing debate on financial reform.

You can help apply the pressure.

This Thursday, April 29, some 10,000 union members, community activists from National People’s Action (NPA) and other groups will march on Wall Street. Our message to the Big Bankers: Americans are angry that their reckless greed made a mess of the economy and destroyed jobs—and it’s time they pay to restore those jobs. If you can’t make it in person, join the more than 8,000 people who have signed up to be taken to the march virtually.

To join the virtual march and demand an end to Wall Street’s reckless practices and insist on real Wall Street reform, click here. We’ll print your name on a sticker that one of the marchers will carry. You can add your personal message to the sign that the marcher will carry in your name. Let the Big Bankers know you’re fed up with their shenanigans and that you want real change. The march and rally, which begin at 4 p.m. EDT, is part of the AFL-CIO’s Good Jobs Now! Make Wall Street Pay mobilization.

Or call in today, and let your senators know we’re counting on them to fight for real reform that:

• Creates an independent agency to protect consumers from predatory lenders;
• Sheds light on the shadow financial system; and
• Puts mandatory limits on bank size and risky behavior.

Many senators can be counted on to do the wrong thing and protect Wall Street, no matter what. Others are persuadable—but they won’t do the right thing and protect our economy from the greed and risky behavior of the banks if we don’t apply pressure. Call your senators today.

Tags: financial reform, Wall Street

Protecting Wall Street

Let’s make no mistake: When Republicans obstruct financial reform legislation, preventing it from even being debated openly on the floor of the Senate for everyone to hear, they are protecting Wall Street from being called to account for its irresponsibility and greed and the damage it has done to the economy as a whole and to millions of individual working people.

That’s just what appears likely to happen later this afternoon, when a vote is scheduled to attempt to break a Republican filibuster not of a Wall Street reform bill but of even talking about it. Instead, Republicans would prefer to keep negotiating secretly for a bill that…does or doesn’t do whatever it is they want.

Senate Republicans are working to finalize their own version of legislation to tighten regulation of the nation’s financial system, and aides said their version could be put forward as a rival to the Democrats’ proposal if a bipartisan deal is not reached before an important procedural vote on Monday afternoon.

Republicans, including Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, have said they would use the procedural vote to block the start of debate on the Democrats’ bill unless the Democrats agree to make substantial changes in it. But in a political climate of public impatience and anger at Wall Street, it was not clear how long the Republicans could hold ranks in delaying the bill.

Matt Yglesias writes:

But it’s time to put up or shut up. If you’re concerned the bill doesn’t address something, then write an amendment to address it. If you think the bill is too tough in some respect, then write an amendment to weaken it. There’s no good reason to insist that everything be done in a secret Shelby-Dodd negotiating process.

Exactly. If they won’t allow the issues to be aired publicly on CSPAN where anyone can see, if they won’t negotiate, point to things in an actual, public bill and say out loud what they want changed and why, it’s because they’re not acting in good faith. Which, surprise, they aren’t.

Tags: financial reform, Wall Street