Here’s How to Make Wall Street Pay for Wrecking the Economy
Three years into the nation’s brutal recession, America’s workers continue to suffer from massive joblessness, skyrocketing foreclosures and weak buying power. But Wall Street—with corporations sitting on $2 trillion in cash—hasn’t paid for its role in causing the near-collapse of the U.S. economy.
The European Union (EU) this week moved to change that, with the EU formally adopting plans for a financial speculation tax that would raise 57 billion euros a year. The tax could generate billions in revenue to help our ailing economy, stimulate job growth and discourage the reckless, high-volume/short-term profit, computer-driven Wall Street gambling that led to our current economic crisis.
While the EU proposal still needs unanimous approval from EU states, there has been no legislative movement to do the same in this country. As economist Dean Baker notes, “the intensity with which the country’s leading deficit hawks continue to ignore financial speculation taxes (FST) is getting ever more entertaining.”
Join Us Today for the K Street Showdown
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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.
The rally kicks off at 11:45 a.m., in McPherson Square at the intersection of K Street and Vermont Ave., N.W.. If you can’t be there in person, join us as we live webstream the rally at www.aflcio.org. Also at www.aflcio.org, you can join in the discussion and leave your comments. Follow the action on Twitter via #bankshowdown and check back here, where we’ll be tweeting the event live. And there’s still time to invite your friends to join us online via Facebook.
Join Us at the K Street Showdown May 17
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We’re getting set for the Showdown on K Street, the Washington, D.C., power corridor where Big Bank and corporate lobbyists scheme and scam to kill Wall Street reform and peddle corporate influence on Capitol Hill.
On May 17, at 11:45 a.m., ET, working families will bring their influence to the nation’s capital. The AFL-CIO, National People’s Action, Move On, SEIU and others will rally to call out the lobbyists who do Wall Street’s dirty work. Click here to sign up to be there in person or join us online.
We’re especially targeting the lobbyists for Wall Street’s Big Six Banks: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo/Wachovia.
From last year to today, Big Banks are spending some $1.4 million a day in lobbying and political expenses to fight legislation that would reform the financial industry and help prevent another economic meltodown. There are four Big Bank lobbyists for every member of Congress.
Wall Street Reform Actions Go Nationwide
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When Wells Fargo shareholders gather for the big bank’s annual shareholders meeting today in San Francisco, they’ll have a lot of company—about 1,000 workers and community and religious activists. They plan to tell Wells Fargo CEOs it’s time to start paying for the jobs they destroyed and that working people “will not be your ATM.”
The San Francisco march and rally is part of a huge week of mobilization for Wall Street reform spearheaded by the AFL-CIO, Working America and community allies, including a Thursday march and rally on Wall Street that is expected to draw 10,000 marchers and nearly as many “virtual marchers.” Click here for more information on the virtual march.
No More Deceit: Strictly Regulate Wall Street
Recent stories about Wall Street contain a recurring theme: deceit.
For example, this week the CEO of the late Lehman Brothers, Richard S. Fuld Jr., with a completely straight face swore to Congress that he’d been utterly out to lunch on the issue of “Repo 105,” a sleight-of-hand accounting procedure auditors found Lehman used to conceal its debts.
Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil lawsuit charging Goldman Sachs with securities fraud and describing a scheme in which Goldman Sachs defrauded clients by selling them a mortgage investment to bet on after secretly permitting selection of its component securities by a hedge fund manager who Goldman Sachs knew planned to bet against it.
2010 PayWatch Exposes Corporate Lobbying on Financial Reform
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The nation’s biggest banks helped create the current financial crisis that required a $700 billion taxpayer bailout. In return, the banks cut back on lending to consumers and small businesses but paid out a record $145 billion in total compensation in 2009.
The 2010 AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch, which launched today, shows the same Big Six banks—Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo—are spending millions of dollars lobbying on financial regulations, including limits on executive pay and risky actions like the ones that caused the current crisis.
In six case studies, PayWatch examines how the companies paid out big bucks to executives and lobbyists:
- Citigroup received more than $45 billion in bailout funds—the largest bank bailout and employs nearly 50 lobbyists. Citigroup’s highest-paid executive, Institutional Clients Group CEO John Havens, received more than $11 million in 2009.
- At Bank of America, Thomas Montag, the head of global banking and markets, collected $30 million last year. And Kenneth Lewis, who retired as CEO at the end of 2009, could collect as much as $83 million over his retirement. The bank has lobbied federal officials and lawmakers on derivatives, executive compensation, oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
Wall Street’s Lobbying On Financial Reform Can’t Duck 2010 PayWatch Spotlight
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Be sure to be here tomorrow when the 2010 AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch shines its spotlight on Wall Street’s Big Six: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo/Wachovia.
The six banks, which received billions of dollars from the Treasury Department’s Troubled Assets Relief Program, now are spending millions of dollars to lobby on financial reform in Congress.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will host a live webcast at noon EDT tomorrow to review the new data and outline plans to enact real financial regulatory reform and make Wall Street pay for job creation through a financial speculation tax. Click here for more information on the webcast.
2010 PayWatch Spotlights Wall Street’s Effort to Block Financial Reform
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Think you’re angry now about CEO bonuses, bailouts and the wheeling and dealing of Big Banks on Wall Street?
Just wait until Tuesday, April 13. The AFL-CIO 2010 Executive PayWatch launches that day, and it will spotlight Wall Street’s Big Six: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo/Wachovia. Each stuck its hands out for the billions of dollars of corporate welfare under the Treasury Department’s Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP)—and now is using our taxpayer money to pay multimillion-dollar bonuses and, even worse, to lobby against financial reform in Congress to ensure they can continue to get away with economic murder.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will highlight a live webcast at noon EST the same day to review the new data and outline plans to enact real financial regulatory reform and make Wall Street pay for job creation through a financial speculation tax.
Holt Baker: ‘We Want Our Jobs Back’
Shouting, “We want our jobs back,” union members and community allies rallied and marched in Cincinnati yesterday to send Morgan Stanley the message that if it can thrive on taxpayer bailout money, it needs to make sure the community prospers as well. The action was part of the AFL-CIO’s more than 200 “Make Wall Street Pay” events taking place through the end of this week. Speaking to the crowd, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker blasted the selfish actions of the Big Banks:
At a time when young people across the country are worried about whether they will lose their jobs out there when they graduate or whether they will find a job, Morgan Stanley paid—get this—$3 million to their lobbyists to kill financial reform. While Morgan Stanley refuses to lend money to small businesses here in Ohio, they’re keeping the company afloat with $10 billion of your hard-earned money. We bailed out these Big Guys behind us, so now it’s time to take that money and give it to the community and local banks so that bank will start to hire people.
Top-Hatted ‘Bankers’ Peddle for Taxpayer Cash in D.C., and More Good Jobs Actions
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On Monday, in Cleveland, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler told a crowd of union activists outside a Morgan Stanley office:
“We’re here at Morgan Stanley to make one thing clear. We need good jobs now. And we are going to make Wall Street pay.”
Meanwhile, in another of the AFL-CIO’s 200 “Good Jobs Now, Make Wall Street Pay” actions taking place through the end of this week, top-hatted “bankers” panhandled for even more bonus bonanzas on a sidewalk in front of a Washington, D.C., Bank of America branch.
The rallies and marches are demanding the Big Six Wall Street banks—Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wachovia-Wells Fargo—take the following actions:
- Pay their fair share to restore the jobs their actions destroyed.
- Stop their multimillion-dollar lobbying blitz to kill financial reform.
- Start lending to communities, small businesses and others starved for credit.
