Wall Street Reform Passes Senate: Conference with House is Chance to Strengthen
Three weeks after more than 15,000 people marched on Wall Street and just days after thousands more marched on K Street demanding Wall Street reform, the Senate last night (59-39) passed legislation to rein-in Wall Street Big Banks’ reckless behavior that crashed the economy.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says the Senate vote was a “sweet victory” for the “tens of millions of working families who lost jobs, homes and income at the hands of the big Wall Street banks.” He also said it was “reassuring” that
the Senate took this step to protect consumers despite the swarms of finance industry lobbyists who converged on Capitol Hill and outlays of $1.4 million a day to block reform. Read the rest of this entry »
Private Equity Firms, Our New Corporate Masters?
Workers returned Tuesday to the job at Stella D’oro Biscuit Co. in the Bronx after a judge ordered the company reinstate the 136 employees who had remained strong throughout a brutal 11-month strike. But before they could even walk through the doors, they were greeted with the anti-union response by the company’s private equity firm owners, the 21st century’s mutation of the robber barons: Brynwood Partners announced it would shut down operations in October. (“Private equity firms” is the euphemism those leveraged buyout corporations adopted after leveraged buyout got a bad name in the 1980s.)
Established more than 75 years ago, Stella D’oro is a nationally known maker of specialty baked goods and until recently was a family-owned business. But a series of corporate buyouts ultimately resulted in Brynwood’s 2006 purchase of the company. And a private equity firm’s only reason for existing is to make money-lots of it. Even robber barons ultimately had to ensure they had enough workers on the job because those companies made money by making things. Not so for today’s private equity firms. Closing shop and making off with the profits is what they do.
