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Citigroup's Football Madness
Feb 02, 2009
Citicorp executives are using $45 million corporate jets for luxury family vacations in Baja at $12,000-a-night hotel rooms, all courtesy of bailout money from you and me.
Banks across America are laying off Americans by the tens of thousands and replacing them with workers in India, The Philippines, and imported foreign highly-trained white collar workers who'll do work for less than half the prevailing wage for Americans.
Meanwhile, most of the banks getting our bailouts have overseas tax shelters to hide their profits; the practice is so pervasive that worldwide corporate tax rates have dropped from 38 percent in 1993 to 26 percent last year, and a significant number of Fortune 500 companies in America pay no corporate income taxes whatsoever. (While we have the second highest corporate income tax rate in the industrialized world at 35 percent, we also have the second lowest percentage of taxes actually paid because of tens of thousands of loopholes drilled into federal tax laws by lobbyists, and these offshore tax havens.)
But our problem isn't "greedy" bankers and corporate executives. The problem we have is structural.
Thirty years ago, America was still held together by policies, laws, and systems put into place during the last Republican Great Depression to prevent a repeat. But since Reagan's election, in the name of "free trade," "the free market," and "freedom" - euphemisms for destroying the New Deal - those structures have been systematically dismantled by four successive administrations and their attendant congresses.
We've lost the wall of separation between banking and gambling (investment). We've lost the ability to tax American corporations on their profits (globalism). And we've lost the ability to protect our domestic industries (particularly our small businesses) and American workers from the predation and unfair competition of companies and countries that use fifty-cent-an-hour labor as a weapon against us ("free trade").
It's easy to take potshots at Citigroup's Sandy Weill for ripping us (and Citigroup) off. But he's just a symptom of a larger problem that has gone by a variety of names over the past thirty years. Reagonomics. Thatchernomics. Clintonomics. Free Trade. Globalization. The World Is Flat. Economic Freedom.
All are just fancy ways of saying that we should play the game of business without any rules other than those defined by the businessmen.
Imagine if this same logic was applied to football:
Goalposts? Yard Lines? Those limit the freedom of players!
Fouls? You're trying to stifle creativity!
Referees? You must be some kind of protectionist, a gestapo who wants to over-regulate everything!
The fact is that we give businesses a lot of special privileges, tax advantages, and liability protections when we set up the game of business. We do so because we want entrepreneurs to play the game of business in a way that makes them money but also - and, actually, first and foremost - serves the public good. Which means having a reasonable playing field, transparent rules that everybody plays by, and referees who catch malefactors and actually throw them out of the game or penalize them.
Thirty years of repeating the 1921-1933 Warren Harding/Calvin Coolidge/Herbert Hoover Republican mistake of "deregulating" business has led to the exact same result it would if we "deregulated" football - chaos.
We must immediately reinstitute our structures. Enforce the Sherman Act (no more "too big to fail" companies, from autos to banks to media). Reenact Glass-Stegall (no more gambling by banks). Pull out of the WTO and go back to the National Industrial and Trade Policy put into place by Alexander Hamilton in 1792 that worked just fine for this country until Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush tore it apart piece by pice.
If we rebuild our field, repaint the lines, reinstall the goalposts, and give whistles and enforcement power back to the referees, we may again have a nation where the business of business is a net positive to We The People. Until that day, Sandy Weill and his cronies are laughing all to the bank...in Liechtenstein.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
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Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream" (2020); "The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America" (2019); and more than 25 other books in print.
Citicorp executives are using $45 million corporate jets for luxury family vacations in Baja at $12,000-a-night hotel rooms, all courtesy of bailout money from you and me.
Banks across America are laying off Americans by the tens of thousands and replacing them with workers in India, The Philippines, and imported foreign highly-trained white collar workers who'll do work for less than half the prevailing wage for Americans.
Meanwhile, most of the banks getting our bailouts have overseas tax shelters to hide their profits; the practice is so pervasive that worldwide corporate tax rates have dropped from 38 percent in 1993 to 26 percent last year, and a significant number of Fortune 500 companies in America pay no corporate income taxes whatsoever. (While we have the second highest corporate income tax rate in the industrialized world at 35 percent, we also have the second lowest percentage of taxes actually paid because of tens of thousands of loopholes drilled into federal tax laws by lobbyists, and these offshore tax havens.)
But our problem isn't "greedy" bankers and corporate executives. The problem we have is structural.
Thirty years ago, America was still held together by policies, laws, and systems put into place during the last Republican Great Depression to prevent a repeat. But since Reagan's election, in the name of "free trade," "the free market," and "freedom" - euphemisms for destroying the New Deal - those structures have been systematically dismantled by four successive administrations and their attendant congresses.
We've lost the wall of separation between banking and gambling (investment). We've lost the ability to tax American corporations on their profits (globalism). And we've lost the ability to protect our domestic industries (particularly our small businesses) and American workers from the predation and unfair competition of companies and countries that use fifty-cent-an-hour labor as a weapon against us ("free trade").
It's easy to take potshots at Citigroup's Sandy Weill for ripping us (and Citigroup) off. But he's just a symptom of a larger problem that has gone by a variety of names over the past thirty years. Reagonomics. Thatchernomics. Clintonomics. Free Trade. Globalization. The World Is Flat. Economic Freedom.
All are just fancy ways of saying that we should play the game of business without any rules other than those defined by the businessmen.
Imagine if this same logic was applied to football:
Goalposts? Yard Lines? Those limit the freedom of players!
Fouls? You're trying to stifle creativity!
Referees? You must be some kind of protectionist, a gestapo who wants to over-regulate everything!
The fact is that we give businesses a lot of special privileges, tax advantages, and liability protections when we set up the game of business. We do so because we want entrepreneurs to play the game of business in a way that makes them money but also - and, actually, first and foremost - serves the public good. Which means having a reasonable playing field, transparent rules that everybody plays by, and referees who catch malefactors and actually throw them out of the game or penalize them.
Thirty years of repeating the 1921-1933 Warren Harding/Calvin Coolidge/Herbert Hoover Republican mistake of "deregulating" business has led to the exact same result it would if we "deregulated" football - chaos.
We must immediately reinstitute our structures. Enforce the Sherman Act (no more "too big to fail" companies, from autos to banks to media). Reenact Glass-Stegall (no more gambling by banks). Pull out of the WTO and go back to the National Industrial and Trade Policy put into place by Alexander Hamilton in 1792 that worked just fine for this country until Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush tore it apart piece by pice.
If we rebuild our field, repaint the lines, reinstall the goalposts, and give whistles and enforcement power back to the referees, we may again have a nation where the business of business is a net positive to We The People. Until that day, Sandy Weill and his cronies are laughing all to the bank...in Liechtenstein.
Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream" (2020); "The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America" (2019); and more than 25 other books in print.
Citicorp executives are using $45 million corporate jets for luxury family vacations in Baja at $12,000-a-night hotel rooms, all courtesy of bailout money from you and me.
Banks across America are laying off Americans by the tens of thousands and replacing them with workers in India, The Philippines, and imported foreign highly-trained white collar workers who'll do work for less than half the prevailing wage for Americans.
Meanwhile, most of the banks getting our bailouts have overseas tax shelters to hide their profits; the practice is so pervasive that worldwide corporate tax rates have dropped from 38 percent in 1993 to 26 percent last year, and a significant number of Fortune 500 companies in America pay no corporate income taxes whatsoever. (While we have the second highest corporate income tax rate in the industrialized world at 35 percent, we also have the second lowest percentage of taxes actually paid because of tens of thousands of loopholes drilled into federal tax laws by lobbyists, and these offshore tax havens.)
But our problem isn't "greedy" bankers and corporate executives. The problem we have is structural.
Thirty years ago, America was still held together by policies, laws, and systems put into place during the last Republican Great Depression to prevent a repeat. But since Reagan's election, in the name of "free trade," "the free market," and "freedom" - euphemisms for destroying the New Deal - those structures have been systematically dismantled by four successive administrations and their attendant congresses.
We've lost the wall of separation between banking and gambling (investment). We've lost the ability to tax American corporations on their profits (globalism). And we've lost the ability to protect our domestic industries (particularly our small businesses) and American workers from the predation and unfair competition of companies and countries that use fifty-cent-an-hour labor as a weapon against us ("free trade").
It's easy to take potshots at Citigroup's Sandy Weill for ripping us (and Citigroup) off. But he's just a symptom of a larger problem that has gone by a variety of names over the past thirty years. Reagonomics. Thatchernomics. Clintonomics. Free Trade. Globalization. The World Is Flat. Economic Freedom.
All are just fancy ways of saying that we should play the game of business without any rules other than those defined by the businessmen.
Imagine if this same logic was applied to football:
Goalposts? Yard Lines? Those limit the freedom of players!
Fouls? You're trying to stifle creativity!
Referees? You must be some kind of protectionist, a gestapo who wants to over-regulate everything!
The fact is that we give businesses a lot of special privileges, tax advantages, and liability protections when we set up the game of business. We do so because we want entrepreneurs to play the game of business in a way that makes them money but also - and, actually, first and foremost - serves the public good. Which means having a reasonable playing field, transparent rules that everybody plays by, and referees who catch malefactors and actually throw them out of the game or penalize them.
Thirty years of repeating the 1921-1933 Warren Harding/Calvin Coolidge/Herbert Hoover Republican mistake of "deregulating" business has led to the exact same result it would if we "deregulated" football - chaos.
We must immediately reinstitute our structures. Enforce the Sherman Act (no more "too big to fail" companies, from autos to banks to media). Reenact Glass-Stegall (no more gambling by banks). Pull out of the WTO and go back to the National Industrial and Trade Policy put into place by Alexander Hamilton in 1792 that worked just fine for this country until Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush tore it apart piece by pice.
If we rebuild our field, repaint the lines, reinstall the goalposts, and give whistles and enforcement power back to the referees, we may again have a nation where the business of business is a net positive to We The People. Until that day, Sandy Weill and his cronies are laughing all to the bank...in Liechtenstein.
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