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Today's Top News
Wall Street Has Already Voted
Before Wall Street drove our economy off a cliff, bullish Citigroup strategists dubbed the United States a "plutonomy." They said, "There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the 'non-rich,' the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie."
Inequality had increased so much since the 1980s, Citi strategists noted in 2005, that the richest 1 percent of households and the bottom 60 percent had "similar slices of the income pie!" Even better, they said, "the top 1 percent of households account for 40 percent of financial net worth, more than the bottom 95 percent of households put together." And the Bush "administration's attempts to change the estate tax code and make permanent dividend tax cuts, plays directly into the hands of the plutonomy."
In "Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer," Citi strategists considered the risk of backlash. "Whilst the rich are getting a greater share of the wealth ... political enfranchisement remains as was - one person, one vote," they said. "At some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich." This could be felt, for example, "through higher taxation (on the rich or indirectly though higher corporate taxes/regulation)."
Fast forward. Wall Street wrecked the economy and was bailed out by the rest of us. "Pay on Wall Street is on pace to break a record high for a second consecutive year," the Wall Street Journal reports. Main Street, meanwhile, suffers record high foreclosures speeded by robo-signers.
Big businesses have a record amount of nearly $2 trillion in cash and are borrowing money cheap to buy other companies, buy back stock and pay out more dividends. Small businesses can't get credit to buy more equipment or hire more workers.
According to the latest IRS data, the 400 richest taxpayers increased their average income by 399 percent, adjusted for inflation, between 1992 and 2007, and lowered their effective income tax rate by 37 percent - from 26.4 percent to 16.6 percent.
This year, the Forbes 400 richest Americans, all billionaires, enjoyed an 8 percent rise in their wealth - while more than one out of eight Americans depends on food stamps.
The backlash is here, but it's lashing in the wrong direction. The anti-government Tea Party rage plays directly into the hands of the Kings of Wall Street.
Wall Street has already voted, pouring money into Republican campaigns and anti-Democratic ads by astroturf groups that don't have to disclose their Big Bank, Big Oil, Big Business donors. "Our target ratio for the 2010 cycle is 80-20 Republican," American Financial Services Association representative Karen Klugh told Politico.
Wall Street expects a good return on their investment. "Wall Street is preparing for a Republican surge in Congress that could help it block proposed taxes on banks and investments, blunt new financial regulations and regain some of the lobbying firepower it lost during the financial crisis," Bloomberg reports. "Banks would prefer to have Republicans overseeing the regulators, lobbyists said."
Wall Street wants freedom to gamble with our money - including the Social Security funds Republicans want to try again to privatize.
"The Republican agenda could also give new life to free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea," Bloomberg reports. That's good news for the plutocrats. As Citigroup said in 2005, "Globalization is making it easier for companies to either outsource manufacturing (source from cheap emerging markets like China and India) or 'offshore' manufacturing (move production to lower cost countries)."
Average wages are 7 percent lower today, adjusted for inflation, than they were back in 1973. Do you want to go lower?
The richest 1 percent has more wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined, but just 1 percent of the vote.
Wall Street plundered your livelihoods, homes and retirement funds - and now they want you to bail them out, again, with your vote.
They want to sell you bait-and-switch candidates like they sold you bait-and-switch mortgages. And laugh all the way to the bank.
Wall Street has voted. It's your turn.
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32 Comments so far
Show AllIs it taco time? Should we run for the border?
Holly tells us "its your turn" to vote.
So what?
98% of "us" end up voting for Democrats or Republicans who are enabling the ever growing fortunes of the 1% at the expense of the rest of us.
Those of "us" who vote third party are told we are wasting our vote by those voting for Democrats.
This truly sad Third World state of affairs has a familiarity of the late Roman Republic era. All the Tea Baggers are missing is a Sulla to lead them.
The new Sulla will emerge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Cornelius_Sulla
Only thing about Sulla was that he gave up his dictatorial power after the balance of power between the senate and tribunes was established thereby restoring a normal constitutional government.
I seriously doubt any tea-bagger would do such a thing if in fact they managed to take power.
Besides, the politicians aren't the real power people. Goldman-Sachs and their associates run the financial engine that gets these political pimps into office. We can even go higher up on the financial food chain, but what difference will it make? I'll only be labeled at that point.
The Tea party candidates, like all other Republicans and Democrats, ultimately want to get into power so they can dip their bread into the Warshington gravy. They want to enrich themselves to the maximum extent as quickly as possible and then, either bored or defeated for reelection, go to work as a lobbyist.
We are being asked to discern which of the two major cancerous parties are least cancerous, and to vote for that party. Don't vote for cancer.
Every time we voted for the lesser of two evils, both evils became more evil.
Voting for the Dems or Repugs is wasting your vote, because no matter which party wins,they both belong to the WAR PARTY!
To NateW
And all we need is a Spartacus to lead us!
My comments appear blocked. Tests it agaian
Hmm, two years ago Citigroup was insolvent, bankrupt, kaput, dead in the water, when it secretly became the largest single recipient of TARP welfare, to the tune of $200 billion, which was then "repaid" by benefit of ZIRP, other covert Fed bailouts, and GSE purchases of toxic casino bets. Gee, I wonder if self-dealing corporate welfare, war profiteering and taxpayer funded bonuses, actively promoted by both political parties, have anything at all to do with gross inequality.
"Wall Street has voted. It's your turn."
Indeed, it's high time we put the Democratic Party out of our misery and the world's once and for all. May the GOP sweep Congress like wildfire and let Boehner finally give Wall Street and the Pentagon all the rope they need --- for a long free-fall, ending in clean, swift decapitation. End the torture. Let Nebuchadnezzar’s wicked kingdom crash and burn. This utterly corrupt system must be razed to its foundation before we can rebuild something truly sustainable with equal opportunity and justice for all. As Rummy would say, "sweep it all up, things related and not."
And labor unions keep endorsing Democrats who are in cahoots with the Republicans and wonder why are losing everything.
Ok,try again
If u believe that uncle sam [masters of wars-peoples] needs two agents to represent him/it. i got even a more believable story or mystory to tell u:
this yr santa clause wld visit every igloo, refuge camp, shed, shack, doorway, lean-to, sleeping bag, underpass and also as usual white houses and nansions.
Btw, uncle needs more meat for his 'missions' [saves me typing "socalled"]. So, start digging tunnels like gazans do just in order to stay alive.
Make sure tunnels do not head for canada-- try granada or el rancha; oops, ranches, but not towards bushy ranch--he's gonna deport to afgh'n or US. tnx
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." -Dwight D. Eisenhower
So that's why we can no longer afford butter.
wow this web site is depressing
No, it's reality that's depressing.
If only there was someone to vote for instead of all these candidates to vote against.
Good article until the last line:
"Wall Street has voted. It's your turn."
As the Dems are just as much in the pocket of Wall St as the Republicans, just who, Holly, are we supposed to vote FOR in an electoral system rigged in favor of those same two parties???
Wall Street voted? Yeah, they voted in 2008. We just thought we did. Wall Street's bait and switch candidate is in the White House.
This year I'm working for my progressive representative (of whom Rahm Emanuel's DCCC has barely taken notice - no surprise) ...
But after this election I'm waiting for the 2012 primaries.
The choice we have is between the evil of two lessers.
It is time to storm the Bastille.
I do believe Wall Street is about to learn about geo-thermal-pissed-off-people power. They can buy all the elections they want. We are the people. We know who they are and what they continue to do.
Do they plan on living on mountain tops and fly to work in helicopters?
We will stand here and take it like the little mutant consuming robots that we have become. Come on, do you actually think that we are actually going to do anything about changing it. We are the shocked and awed and overpowered by a culture that lies to us every chance it gets and throws all the perverse stupid dramas at us day after day thanks to the corporate media and the coporatacracy this country has become. Lets give a big shout out to the investor class especially the so called retail investors, the 401kers that are so blinded by the crap wall street and the quants would have them believe that a free market exists and to the politicians that are in their pockets. Global economy indeed.
Fennec says, "We will stand here and take it like the little mutant consuming robots that we have become."
I agree it looks grim. People like me who saw all this comng and were looked at strangely (what's wrong with this guy? What a depressing dude, etc.) prepared over a decade ago. I got used to a frugal lifestyle, refused any 401K or stock investment accounts available with the federal government and, instead of buying a house I couldn't afford, I bought a manufactured home, paid it off in two years and now am on the hook for just the lot rent on my one third acre ($415 a month). Vermont is a rent control state so they can't raise the rent faster than the CPI allows. My car is 13 years old (I refused to enter into debt on the cash for clunkers scam) and I owe NOTHING to anybody. I haven't bought any new clothing in over 7 years. I do not have cable or a cell phone. I only got high speed internet because the bundle made it $20 cheaper per month than my present land line phone bill. I have a push mower and I shovel my snow. If I didn't have so many tall trees around my house, I'd put in solar panels to lower my power bill but with only 1000 square feet to heat, it's not that big a deal.
THAT'S how I kick Wall Street right in the family jewels every day of my life. You've read my screeds here. Do I sound like trailer trash to you?
It was a choice because there is war on. Good people don't fight with violence. They fight with discipline and brains. But yeah, the violence from those 'mutant consuming robots' is assured when they get cut off. It's coming. The Wall Street brainwashing of the masses (YOU deserve this, you've earned this, splurge on yourself, you're number one. etc.) is going to eat Wall Street alive. They asked for it.
"Good people don't fight with violence. They fight with discipline and brains." Well I am not a good person and I will kick the crap out of them every chance I get. They really need to feel the hurt that many have to go through everyday just to stay alive. The founders of the country, and they had many bad ways about them like "slavery" for one, all the while talking about freedom, fought and froze and finally kicked the hell out of the British. The time is coming.
Hey they could move to those scraped off mountain tops they helped to finance in West Virginia.
that ending- "Now it's your turn" sounds like a mocking taunt. she has just explained how wall street has taken control of the country. So I guess it must be my turn to buy congress, get a bailout, a raise, and a bonus.
Sklar has been around a long time. That's why her GOTV message makes no sense . She KNOWS the Dems are also wanting to "give new life to free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea". She KNOWS that voting for Dems does nothing but feed the war machine. What's up, Holly? Does Chris Hedges' last column got you pegged, too?
I wonder... Is it possible for the average citizen to get out from under the threat of the government trying to fix things through the robbing of Social Security? I mean, what would happen if Americans just went to the SSI office, said that "I don't wish to participate any more." And then asked for the funds that are listed in that SSI mailing that we receive so often... While I don't think it would be simple, is it possible? I really don't think that I'll ever see any of that money unless I become disabled soon... Not that I am looking forward to that...
Holly, Americans went out and voted Democrat in droves in 2006 and 2008, and the Democrats have carried out Republican policies in response, to the near exclusion of all other activity.
Without repeating the long list, 0bama and the majority of his Democratic associates have supported oil and coal over green energy, gifts to corporate gamblers over social spending, the insurance and pharmacy industries over their victims and those within the medical industry who serve them, military expansion over both economic restraint and human decency, imprisonment and torture by fiat over the rule of law.
These are the very policies that Americans voted Democrat in 2006 and 2008 to avoid.
Wall Street voted heavily for 0bama in 2008, remember? Why do you suppose that might that have been?
Surely it was not because McCain espoused policies less favorable to Wall Street than those 0bama made gestures to espouse. No, they figured he would win because the Bushies had shredded a good part of what passes for "social fabric," and people were upset. Well, now the Democrats have massively betrayed their constituency, and Wall Street would be utterly foolish to not bet against them. After all, one consequence of Democratic betrayal is that the Republicans will be making more decisions in a very short time.
I don't like it either, but the Democratic leadership has already voted, and with Wall Street.