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A TIME TO GIFT, OR A TIME TO GRIFT? IT'$ CHRISTMAS BONUS TIME FOR THE SWELLS ON WALL STREET
By Danny Schechter
Author of The Crime Of Our Time
Go, Wall Street, Go!
Never mind the rise in unemployment and foreclosures. Never mind the folks waiting to know if they will get the benefits they need before they are cut off. Never mind the growing gap between rich and poor, and the continuing spread of poverty.
(Did you know that inequality in the USA is at the highest level of any industrialized country?)
Does any of this matter?
The idea of equality as a social goal is apparently passé
Christmas has a special meaning on Wall Street:
It's bonus time. This brings to mind Peter Wolf singing with the J Geils Band, "First I look at the Purse."
The context was different but the meaning is the same.
Just five too big to fail bankster companies have stashed $90 billion for payouts to prized employees. They know that the beat on The Street is fading, so it seems to be take the money and run time.
Incidentally, that "bonus pool" will rise with end of the year earnings.
Right now, the greedsters have a PR problem--how to transfer all this wealth from the banks to themselves with the lowest possible tax rate and the lowest degree of bad publicity.
They also will try to focus the media on supporting their right to such over the top rewards and "incentives" in the name, of course, of fostering an economic recovery/
Yes, it is a cynical exercise but no more blatant that the successful campaign to extend the Bush tax cuts for millionaires.
