The Rich Are Different. They Have Jobs
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Goldman Sachs, one of the Wall Street firms that got the H1N1 flu shot well ahead of millions of America’s school children, sent this health tip in a memo to its pampered, out-of-touch execs: “Resist the urge to open your own car door; let your driver do it.”
Yo, Jeeves. While you’re at it, dust around the edges of those massive CEO pay packages. Because according to a report released today by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), top executives at four companies that jettisoned their employee pension plans received $49.5 million in retirement and severance benefits in the years before the companies filed for bankruptcy, while retirees saw their benefits cut by as much as two-thirds.
Yet Wall Street bankers are making that cash flow keeps coming: Yesterday, writes David Dayen, Senate Republicans bowed low before their corporate masters and delayed a move by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) to immediately take up a bill that would freeze all credit card rates, charges and fee increases.
Educating Timothy Geithner: The Congressional Review Panel on Capitol Hill
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The American people worry about how their $590 billion in taxpayer money is being spent in the big bank bailout—and, on Capitol Hill today, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was told why. In his first appearance before the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which has spent nearly six months reviewing the expenditures of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), COP chairwoman Elizabeth Warren told Geithner:
People are angry that even if they have paid their bills on time consistently and never missed a payment, their TARP-assisted banks are unilaterally raising their interest rates or slashing their credit lines….People are angry when they read headlines of record foreclosures because even if they aren’t personally facing trouble with their mortgages, they see their own property worth less and their communities declining as a result of the foreclosures all around them.
I appreciate your repeatedly stated commitment to transparency and accountability…but more remains to be done. People need to understand why you are making the choices you are making.
