WHAT’S WRONG WITH WALL STREET?
There are two sides of the Wall Street debate. There’s the common-sense side that wants to put back the regulations that safeguarded our economy since the Great Depression until they were repealed in 1999-2000.
Unfortunately, that side doesn’t have a political party representing them right now.
Then there is the side that works in the interest of the big banks that don’t want to fix the problems that led to our collapsing economy. Instead, they want to make cosmetic changes that basically still allow the banks to keep doing what they’ve been doing and remaining too-big-to-fail. The people on that side of the debate are known as Democrats and Republicans.
And unfortunately, the news media does nothing to clear up anything or give us relevant information about potential financial reform legislation.
What sort of information? Well, for starters, how about explaining what “too big to fail” means? And then how ‘bout telling us who is in favor of ending it and who isn’t, and why? Or how about telling us if current legislation will keep us from the situation that led us into this mess? Does it fix the problems that we need to have fixed so that it never happens again? And why are Senators filibustering debate about regulation?
They report on Wall Street like they report on everything: like it’s a soap opera, conveying the drama of events without ever giving relevant facts. Not only am I not being informed when I watch news reports about Wall Street, but I swear to God, it feels like I am somehow having information erased from my brain.
BROKEN
“In 1985, the top 5% of the households had net worth of $8 trillion, which is a lot. Today, the top five percent have net worth of $40 trillion. . . . The top 5% have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980.”
—David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s budget director
“We’re broke!”
—John Boehner, Speaker of the House
The richest country the world has ever known, with an economy twice the size of China’s, and we’re broke? Sounds like Johnny’s full of shit or using a Texas math book.
So how can the people who own and run the country be richer than ever, yet the country is broke? Isn’t that weird? It’s like the economic system is rigged or something.
We’re broke! They scream, as they dismantle the few programs that still work for the people. Cut education. We’re broke! Cut Social Security and Medicare. We’re broke!! Cut the military. Hold on, we’re not that broke.
Of course we are not broke. The United States has a GDP double that of China’s, yet we are broke and can’t afford things, and if we don’t stop blowing our money on old people’s medicine and teachers’ pensions, we will go from broke to bankrupt, AND THEN SHIT WILL REALLY BE SCARY!!!
When they say we can’t afford things, they don’t mean things like trillion dollar wars, bank bailouts, prison construction, or billions in oil subsidies. No, they mean we can’t afford things like cops, firemen, teachers, schools, Medicare, food stamps, Social Security, and anything else that actually helps people and strengthens our society.
We’re not broke; in fact, we’re loaded, it’s just that the people in charge think that spending the money on the common good is a bad investment.
While the top 5% were gaining more wealth than the rest of the universe since the Big Bang, they were also sending your job to China, closing factories, and laying off all the people that made stuff.
See, productivity used to be tied to pay increases. That is no longer true. American worker’s are waaaay more productive than they were 30 years ago. We would have 20 million more workers in the economy if we stayed at the same productivity levels we had in 1980.
So now, when workers are more productive and generate more revenue per hour worked, they generate enormous wealth for the corporations, but they get left out of their fair share of the profits. This is all happening in plain sight, day in and day out.
What we need to remember when we hear from people who have made trillions off of supply-side “Trickle-Down” economics is . . . they are full of shit. They are constantly defending a rigged economic system that has already been thoroughly debunked and discredited, except nobody seems to have told them or the American news media, and certainly not the American public.
And the biggest bullshit part of “Trickle Down” is that if we give massive amounts of wealth to the people already at the top, then a boatload of jobs will automatically appear . . . except we’ve been giving boatloads of money to the people already at the top since 1980, and accelerated that giving since 2000, and we are in the middle of the worst economy in 70 years. So how could that be?
If I didn’t know better, I would think “Trickle Down” economics is a bunch of economic bullshit designed to enrich those who are already wealthy and screw the rest of us. But that can’t be true, because this was all started by Ronald Reagan. There’s the old saying, “You can’t take it with you when you die.” The rich who own our country don’t just want to “take it with them,” they want to take it all with them.
“I think that 99% of people on Wall Street are honest. They’re ethical, they care about the country, they care about their shareholders . . . you always have bad apples.”
—Sandy Weill, man who turned investment banking into casino gambling
You always have a few bad apples in any business . . . or as we call them on Wall Street, “chief executive officers.”
If you’ve never heard of Sandy Weill, he’s a former chairman and CEO of Citigroup. I assumed he went on TV to explain how his plan for world domination was going swimmingly until James Bond ruined everything by blowing up his secret lair. But instead he said that bullshit to make him and his criminal buddies seem likable.
You know, the kind of good people that care about feeding the poor and mentoring kids. They're such good people that it’s still a mystery how they systematically and continuously bundled and sold worthless pieces of toxic paper to unsuspecting customers that cratered the housing market, wiping out retirees’ wealth and collapsing an entire economy, while enriching themselves beyond their wildest dreams. Those kind of "good people."
“I think what we should probably do is split up investment banking from banking, have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not going to be too big to fail.”
—Sandy Weill
Wait, a system where consumer banks are separate from investment banks?! I mean, that’s fucking crazy! Except that it used to be the law—Glass-Steagall, which was instituted right after the financial crash of 1929, was designed to prevent exactly what happened in 2007, and which, get this, Sandy Weill—this guy—successfully worked to repeal during the Clinton years.
Now he’s saying what most sane people have been saying since 2007. It only took the former head of Citigroup five years to get as smart as a knucklehead like me. The technical term for this is “Douchebag’s Remorse.”
Sandy Weill is for Glass-Steagall. In related news, Chris Christie is rethinking deep frying. When the guy who got Glass-Steagall repealed tells you Glass-Steagall needs to come back, I’m pretty sure it’s time for it to come back.
And by the way—DUH!!! Go find your average idiot and explain to them what Glass-Steagall is, they’ll say, “Oh yeah, we should have that.” And when you further explain to that idiot—that the first deregulating of Glass-Steagall lead to the S&L crisis in the 1980s, and later to the economic down-turn in 2007, he’ll say, “Gosh, what were the smart people thinking?”
If you further tell him that the president, the secretary of the Treasury, and Congress have not so much as floated the idea of reinstituting this law—well, that idiot’s head might just explode.
LIBOR THE POINT
The too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates. Which isn’t a big deal, except for the fact that global interest rates affect the price of everything.
The Libor scandal is the biggest scandal in financial history. Libor calculates and then sets the average banking interest rates. What we know now is that banks have been rigging the numbers in their favor. It has affected prices on roughly $500 TRILLION worth of financial instruments, which eventually hits local municipalities and the lives of everyday people.
When Sandy Weill was asked about the Libor scandal, he did more tiptoeing than a ballerina.
CNBC: “. . . The Libor scandal, the idea that banks are rigging this incredibly important . . .”
Weill: “I was very surprised; I don’t think we know all the facts yet, or who did what . . .”
Ironic that the cowboy who deregulated the entire banking system now urges caution. I hear ya Sandy, let’s not rush to judgment; in fact, let’s move quickly in the opposite direction.
CNBC hosts usually are practiced at pretending that the guest is answering questions when they’re not. But Sandy is doing such a piss-poor job that they can’t. So they push back, and get a load of how Sandy Weill responds:
CNBC: “We know that Barclays was putting in wrong bids and fake bids. They’ve admitted to that. Just the idea that trillions of dollars of investments are based on it [the Libor interest rate] . . .”
Weill: “It’s very unfortunate. Whatever happened, happened.”
He’s right. Whatever happened did indeed happen. Some people call it “rigging the system,” Sandy calls it “his life’s work.”
If you’re waiting for Sandy to say what is self-evidently true—like “criminal bankers have juiced the system for themselves while screwing over everybody else!”—you’ll have to continue waiting. Remember, he said it was only a few bad apples.
And just to make us feel better before he left, Sandy gave us this:
“Believe me, we feel really bad about all the money they stole from people . . . though we are glad we’ll never be punished.”*
SHITTY MEDIA TALKS WALL STREET
“If they really are running [banks] that are so stressed that they can’t do their basic work [of lending money], why are they paying themselves so much money? Where did all these enormous salaries come from if they’re in so much trouble?”
—Barney Frank, Meet the Press
“HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!!”
—Rest of the panel
Meet The Press September 15, 2013:
• Maria Bartiromo, CNBC
• Hank Paulson, Former Treasury Secretary
• Barney Frank, Former Congressman
• David Gregory, Tool
There are some people who wake up every day and drink the Kool-Aid. Witness here Maria Bartiromo—the pretend financial journalist and actual financial industry mouthpiece; and right beside her, former Treasury secretary under Bush junior, Mr. Hank Paulson—who, like all great regulators of the financial industry, was the CEO of Goldman Sachs for seven years. And of course, they are hosted by David Gregory, who also drinks the Kool-Aid, but just because he likes the taste and doesn’t know better.
Now, what they’re discussing here is the state of the banks, five years after the Lehman Brothers meltdown—a meltdown that, by the way, both of these guests had a significant hand in causing. And if you think David Gregory will ever ask them about that . . .
Also, next week, David Gregory will be interviewing the foxes about the great hen-house disaster five years later. Are the hen houses any better? We’ll find out.
Yes, public favorability of the banking industry—a statistic that the last five years have shown has absolutely no meaning at all. “Wow, people don’t like me and my fellow bankers? Gosh, it almost makes me not enjoy my yacht as much . . . ”
But the question they are unsuccessfully trying to answer here is, “If they are sitting on trillions of dollars, why aren’t the banks lending more and investing more in the real economy?” In response to which David Gregory shows off his stenography skills.
“As I talk to bankers . . . they say, ‘We have to keep so much in reserve now, there’s not enough capital to invest, that ultimately hurts economic growth, we’re not able to make as much money, make as many deals’ . . . and we have tremendous income inequality 5 years later . . . did Wall Street win in all this?”
I like the way David Gregory just repeats what bankers have told him without ever checking 1. It’s veracity, and 2. It’s validity. “Oh, you guys can’t invest money because of capital requirements? Doesn’t sound like a claim I should check out at all—nor should I point out that those minor capital requirements were put in place because you fuckers almost destroyed the world?!”
But seriously, Maria Bartiromo, you didn’t see any of this coming at all and still have massive conflicts of interest in this area—what do you think? And feel free to answer a completely different question.
“Wait, capital has doubled, and liquidity has doubled or tripled.”
—Maria Bartiromo
AND . . .? The next logical thing to explain, Maria, is why isn’t that money getting invested back into the economy? And yet—
“We need to get beyond the conversation of ‘Is Wall Street evil and causing pain?’ and toward the conversation of ‘How do we sustain growth?’”
So Maria thinks we need to get beyond “is Wall Street evil.” I don’t think we need to get beyond it—I definitely feel like I could have that conversation all day . . .
How do we create sustainable economic growth? My God, why didn’t I realize that’s the big deal question?!!! If only one domestic policymaker since the beginning of time could have thought of that question. What fools we’ve been!
I’m gonna flip over all of my cards and just let you know: Maria Bartiromo succeeds in saying exactly nothing here.
Sustainable economic growth will answer the question of inequality . . . you know, like it always has, right?
“Trillions of dollars are on the balance sheets . . . we need to come together and figure out how businesses, banks included, are actually going to spend that money.”
Listen to what she just said: We need to come together and decide how corporations and banks are going to spend that money . . . NO, WE’RE NOT! I’m no journalist for CNBC, but I’m pretty sure we don’t get to decide what they do with their money . . . if we did, you wouldn’t have a fucking JOB.
The banks now have raised more money on hand, capital, than they did before the crash. Maria sees this as an “absolute positive.” Really? The fact that capital has been raised is an absolute positive? I’d say it’s more of a potential positive. Until they do anything with it, it’s an absolute nothing.
I assume they’ve made a Scrooge McDuck swimming pool of cash. It’s what I’d do. It could also be a potential negative. I mean, how do we know the banks won’t take that three trillion and buy a weather machine with which to hold the world hostage? Oh, that’s right, they seem to be able to hold the world hostage without a weather machine.
And then after Maria is finished spewing empty platitudes, Hank Paulson joins in with:
“I couldn’t agree more!”
—Hank Paulson
AGREE WITH WHAT, SECRETARY PAULSON?! She didn’t fucking say anything! And then he adds on to the nothingness with another empty platitude:
“We need to see Democrats and Republicans coming together to deal with the big structural reforms we need.”
—Hank Paulson
Look, the banks and financial services industry have paid for pretty much every president for the last twenty years. They have gotten their industry deregulated with every administration . . . so if they really want structural changes, I’m pretty sure they could get it done, which makes me think maybe they are lying when they say they are waiting on these structural changes.
At the end of the day, this is the same tired, disproven talking point over and over again: that banks and companies are waiting for certainty before they’ll start re-investing in America.
Let me just say, I have sat at a lot of L.A. brunch places and overheard a lot of stupid people talking; I have smoked pot with people trying to discuss current events even though they don’t own a television; I’ve been to Passover seders where everyone was angry and had a head injury, but this is easily one of the more stupid and circular conversations I’ve ever heard.
And then Barney Frank speaks up. And I’m not saying he’s necessarily pulling this conversation anywhere productive, but at least he’s putting the other three corporate shills in their place with a drop of common sense. If they can’t lend money, then how come they can pay themselves so much goddamned money?
And it is met with a deafening SILENCE. Maria and Hank are just staring at him as if to say, “Um, that’s not a serious question, right?” Even though it’s the question that pretty much every American has been asking since 2008. Or maybe what their faces really mean is, “Hey Congressman Fabulous, ix-nay on the ompensation-cay, cuz if we answer that, the jig is up.”
What would be great is if Barney Frank had dropped that question and Paulson had, without missing a beat, just said, “Well, because it’s all bullshit—because the whole of the banking system is designed and built around a handful of people consolidating wealth and power for themselves through any means necessary—you don’t think a little thing like common sense is going to get in the way of that, do you?”
HEY, ASSHOLE!–JAMIE DIMON
“We know we were sloppy. We know we were stupid; regulators should look at something like this—that’s their job.”
—Jamie Dimon, on losing $6.2 billion
Let me set the stage. Your car had defective brakes and crashed into a tree about five years ago. Your insurance company buys you a brand new car, which is the same car with the same brake problem. Now, the car is the economy, the insurance company is the U.S. government, the faulty brakes are credit default swaps, and you’re still getting totally fucked.
Here’s Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase . . . you know, one of the handful of banks that can single-handedly sink the nation’s economy? Like the ones that did? Yeah, one of those. For those who don’t remember, the two things that took down the economy in 2008 were toxic mortgage-backed securities and something called derivatives, or credit default swaps. Well, in May 2012, JP Morgan disclosed that they had lost over two billion dollars in the derivatives market. So, Jamie Dimon had spent the last week in almost non-stop message control. And when you want to control the message, as always, the best place to go is Meet the Press, where David Gregory will let you make long-winded, self-serving statements, and then pretend to challenge you for a few seconds. Here’s Dimon from that interview:
“We need solutions. You know, finger-pointing, scapegoating, yelling and screaming I’ve never seen fix something . . .”
You know who else is against finger-pointing? Criminals. In fact, there is a new organization called “Stop the Finger-Pointing,” headed by Bernie Madoff.
Yeah, I agree, finger-pointing, scapegoating, and screaming won’t fix the problem. You know what will? Appropriately assigning responsibility and administering proportional punishment so that reckless and greedy assholes know they can’t get away with this bullshit. Don’t worry, Jamie—it’s not gonna happen. I’m just saying, it would be nice.
I like how he uses “We” when he says, “We need solutions.” Really, Jamie, “We”? Oh, you’re in this with the rest of us, Jamie? That just seems weird to me that we need solutions, when you created the problem. I got a pretty good solution for you: Stop fucking around with credit default swaps—that’s from the you-touched-the-stove-once-and-now-you-know-not-to-do-that school of economics. It’s a little complicated, I know.
But he really wants “solutions”! You know, the kind that don’t involve regulation or reforming the system, or investigating those responsible. By solutions, he means keeping everything the exact same way it’s always been.
DIMON A DOZEN
By the way, the week after the $6 billion loss was revealed, the board of JP Morgan voted to keep Dimon on as both chairman and CEO with his $23 million pay package intact. I assume because Jamie Dimon has photos of each board member having gay sex with every other board member. Because if that’s not the case, it would mean the spirit of corporate and official responsibility is completely dead—and that would be crazy!
Twenty-three million a year. 23 million! Nobody is worth that kind of money. Okay, maybe Ryan Seacrest.
Twenty-three million and he lost 6.2 billion? Wow, I’ve lost money in my life, but nowhere near 6.2 billion, but then again, I’m not an expert. $6.2 billion? you gotta get an MBA to lose that kind of money.
Oh, and Ina Drew—the executive who directly oversaw this debacle (with full knowledge of her superiors)—will be retiring to the pile of money she’s made over the years; she was one of the highest paid officers at JP Morgan. And, to boot, she likely will get a $14 million retirement package. It’s like she’s a public school teacher. Also, I still don’t get what all those Occupy Wall Street people were going on about.
Can you imagine what the conversation with Ina Drew, the executive in charge of financial risk, was like?
Trader: “Hey Ina, we have a deal here that might lose a little money, like a couple hundred million?”
Ina Drew: “How many hundred million?
Trader: “Oh I don’t know, like 60 hundred million.”
Ina Drew: “Will it affect my 1.2 million a month or my 14 million retirement?”
Trader: “No?”
Ina Drew: “Then go ahead, who wants lunch?”
And . . . scene.
(Now back to our regularly scheduled outrage over Jamie Dimon already in progress.)
We need solutions, not blame? That’s like the chief of police saying, “Look, we don’t need to find and stop this serial killer; we need a way to stop these killings.” Let me translate Mr. Dimon’s little piece of sophistry. What he means is, “Look, taking responsibility for this isn’t going to help; we need to figure out how we’re going to get our money back!” The mob is run better than this. If this guy were a Gambino, he would have accepted that money was gone forever, and he would be dead.
Thank goodness David Gregory is there to put this one back on track.
“But what about accountability?”
Boo-yah! Yeah! What about accountability?! Go get ‘em, D-Greg!
“I mean, you know, there are the stories about the bank fees—you know, the ATM fees being passed onto consumers. More regulation? Well it’s going to be passed on to the consumer.”
Aaaand . . . you lost me. Bank fees? ATM fees? This guy has Jamie Dimon in front of him and he asks about ATM FEES? He could have Don Corleone in front of him, and he’d ask about olive oil.
This is like a drunken conversation. Like you were just making a complex point about the dangers of supply-side economics, and David Gregory goes, “Yeah—and what’s the deal with no double coupons at my grocery store?!”
How about a system based on fraud that ended up cratering our economy so we are now firing teachers, cops, and firemen, and kicking returning war heroes out of their houses? How about that? ROBO-SIGNING anyone? Does Gregory bring that up? No, that would be impolite. Gregory continues:
“You know, you hear it over and over again from critics that say, you know what? Wall Street brought down the economy; nobody’s going to jail.”
OK, now we’re back on track. I have no idea how you expect this guy to answer this, given the fact that he’s one of the people who should go to jail, and he just said he doesn’t want to take responsibility—but still, whenever David Gregory gets in the ballpark, it’s a minor victory. Baby steps, David, baby steps. At this rate, Meet the Press will be a great show for my grandchildren to watch.
How naïve of Gregory to wonder why none of the Wall Street bankers has been incarcerated. Well you know, David, jail is for people that steal thousands of dollars, not billions of dollars.
See, David doesn’t seem to understand how this works, Wall Street operates outside the jail system. Jail is for the dregs of society—your drug addicts, rapists, and Martha Stewarts.
“I think there—you could say, ‘these bad actors should be punished—go punish the bad actors.’”
Huh? What’s Steven Segal got to do with this? Quit changing the subject.
But I am with him on that one—I saw some dinner theater the other night, and I definitely felt some punishment was in order after that production of The Pajama Game.
“I think that when you say that ‘Wall Street’—well, I think that you’re—that, that’s not true. Not everyone on Wall Street was bad.”
Not everyone on Wall Street was bad; come on, that’s a whole street! There were many hot dog vendors and shoeshine attendants that had nothing to do with anything.
I see his point, though—you can’t arrest everyone, so why arrest anyone?
Less than a minute ago, this guy was saying he doesn’t want to blame anyone; he wants to find the solution. Now he’s saying he wants to punish the people responsible, but that there is no underlying problem to solve. That’s like a snake eating its own tail—while shaped into a Möbius strip.
Now, I just told a joke I don’t even understand to express how much I don’t understand this guy.
“Not all bankers are bad, not all media is bad; I like you.”
Of course you like him; he hasn’t asked you a tough question in 20 minutes, and he’s lobbed you so many softballs that this interview should be on ESPN!
“So, I don’t like this attitude of just blame everybody. Go get—if you think someone did something wrong, go get those people that did something wrong and blame them.”
No shit, CEO of one of the largest banks in the world. I can’t believe it, either. Besides talking like “Joe, The Blue-Collar Guy Who Has a Lot to Say,” his statements betray fairly two-dimensional thinking. For instance, he’s incapable of understanding that maybe the policies and culture of Wall Street are what made it possible—if not likely—that bad actors would eventually wipe out hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth. Also, Captain Best and Brightest here seems to have trouble with the complexities of, say, it’s not an either/or situation. See, we can punish greedy, reckless douchebags and say Wall Street sucks balls at the same time.
“In the meantime, the rest of us should hold hands, get together, collaborate.”
Yes, that’s what we should do. Get a really good arts commune going.
“Business and government together. Fix the problem. It’s going to be very hard for government to do it on its own. And business can’t do it without collaborating with the government.”
I would be willing to see how government does on its own. I mean totally free of lobbying and corporate financing of national campaigns. I’m pretty sure business can do it on its own, too—it just won’t be as easy, what with the government passing laws that consistently favor big business and giving out fat government contracts and bailing out the banks and protecting asshole Bank bosses like you from being murdered in the streets by an angry mob of well-informed people.
WHY DO WE HATE JAMIE DIMON?
Jamie Dimon is the president and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, which is one of the top four banks in the U.S. It used to be one of the top nine, but we as a nation all agreed we needed to consolidate our “too-big-to-fail” banks.
He also sits on the Board of Directors of the New York Federal Reserve . . . and there’s no way that might be a conflict of interest that speaks to a systemic problem of money influencing government. He’s held these two positions since before the recession of 2008.
So why do we hate Jamie Dimon more than all of the other investment bankers who stayed rich while they tanked the economy? Why is he the bluest Smurf? Well, the Obama administration has held up Jamie as an example of what a great manager should be.
Democrats and Republicans alike in both the House and Senate love this guy. To hear these guys gush, you’d swear he hot-tubs with them every weekend. Jamie Dimon has taken this incredible influence and goodwill and used it to fight every common-sense financial regulation that has ever been.
So, maybe the question shouldn’t be Why Do We Hate Jamie Dimon? Maybe the question should be Why Do Policymakers Love Him?
BLANKFIEN AND OTHER SWINE
“You’re going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people’s expectations . . . the entitlement and what people think they’re going to get because they’re not going to get it. Social Security was not devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career. The retirement age has to be changed; maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised, but in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.”
—Lloyd Blankfien, billionaire, CEO Goldman-Sachs, letting us know there isn’t enough pie for us
CBS News decided to do a story on the deficit, what the problems are, and how we can fix them. And who better to help us understand the problems of our debt and deficit than a billionaire banker who stuffed his pockets full of cash while helping bankrupt the treasury?
And guess what he sees as the big problem with the deficit. Is it unpaid for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires?
Nope.
Is it the 80 billion dollars the Federal Reserve gives to Wall Street for free every month in the form of “quantitative easing”?
Nope, that’s not it.
So what does one of the heads of Wall Street think is the problem with our debt?
It’s these fucking old people who worked all their life and now want to retire and expect Social Security to give them $660 a month of the money they paid into it. I knew it wasn’t Wall Street and outsourcing of jobs to slave labor, I just knew it!
Plus he provides us with some outrageously compelling and completely made-up statistics to back up his bullshit.
“30-year retirement after a 25-year of career” . . . so wait a minute, someone retires after 25 years of work? So he is saying the problem is all those people who start working at 40 years old? I’ve never met anyone like that, but according to his totally bullshit argument, there are tons of them. And the reporter lets it fly right by.
“Times have changed . . .” Yeah, times have changed, Lloyd; it’s not like the old days when you retired at 65, and a few weeks later your heart exploded. Now these assholes work their whole lives and then don’t die right away. These are really fucked up times.
I don’t blame him for being annoyed; these deadbeats who’ve spent their whole lives just scraping by want to retire on money that belongs to hard-working billionaires. It seems like Lloyd’s theory is that if you explain to people that the government will no longer pay for their old age, you can mentally prepare them to die a lot sooner than they expected. Savings, savings, savings!
“We’re going to have to do something to lower people’s expectations . . .”
Yeah, It’s about time we put the responsibility where it belongs . . . on the people who should’ve made more money.
“Social Security was not devised to be a system that supported you with a 30-year retirement . . .”
So his point is that we just can’t keep wasting Social Security on all these 95-year-olds!
Is that really a big drain on the Treasury? Is all the Social Security being eaten up by the 90-year-olds? Well, as of 2006 there were 1.9 million people over 90 years of age in the U.S., and they suck up a little over a billion in Social Security a year. That’s billion with a B! Or roughly a little less than we spend in Afghanistan per week. So can you see the dilemma that kids in the future will deal with? Are we going to support our Americans over 90, or cut out a whole week of fighting in the Middle East? Talk about Sophie’s Choice.
“The retirement age has to be changed . . .”
Yeah, we should raise the retirement age to say, 67, 70, 89 . . . we’ll save a fortune on gold watches for retirement.
Just so we are clear on how off the mark he is, consider that most people who actually work for a living aren’t living longer. Since 1977, those in the upper half of income have seen their life expectancy expand by six years, while those in the bottom half have gained only 1.3 years.
So it turns out that once again, the often-repeated talking point of Social Security going bankrupt because people are collecting benefits for thirty years is wrong. Not just wrong, but completely wrong. And guess who it is wrong in favor of? The working class? Nope. Turns out the often-repeated incorrect assumption favors the really rich guys like bank chairmen and millionaire TV news readers.
Or as Ezra Klein put it:
“If you’re wealthy, you do have many more years to enjoy Social Security. But if you’re not, you don’t. And so making it so people who aren’t wealthy have to wait longer to use Social Security is a particularly cruel and regressive way to cut the program.”
The other thing to consider is that most people who rely on Social Security had jobs that were physically demanding, and they literally cannot perform them any longer. Again, Ezra Klein explains:
“Sixty-five is the law’s standard retirement age. Most people begin taking Social Security benefits at 62, which is as early as the law allows you to take them.
“When they do that, it means they get smaller benefits over their lifetime. We penalize for taking it early. But they do it anyway. They do it because, unlike many folks in finance or in the U.S. Senate or writing for the nation’s op-ed pages, they don’t want to work ‘til they drop.”
“So that is what makes their lies so insidious; they hurt the people who are the most vulnerable. The people who most need that program are going to be further burdened by people who least need it.”
Lloyd Blankfien’s annual salary is $55 million, his net worth is $450 million, and his company has received over $10 billion dollars in TARP from U.S. taxpayers.
So, as Klein put it, rich guys like Blankfien are “bravely advocating for a cut they will never feel.” A real profile in courage.
It turns out, having all the money in the world does not build character.
The other ‘expert’ that CBS News interviewed was the CEO of Honeywell, aka a defense contractor, aka gets most of their money from the government, aka another multi-millionaire:
“The big nut is going to have to be Medicare and Medicaid . . . at the end of the day, you can’t avoid the topic, especially with the baby boomer generation retiring; it’s going to literally crush the system.”
—David Cote, chairman of Honeywell, defense contractor
The big nut is not defense, remember that. It’s not two unfunded wars and the Bush tax cuts that are crushing our system, because wars and tax cuts never crush anything; the only thing with the power to crush things is healthcare for the elderly, remember that.
What he’s really saying is that Medicare is raiding our military budget . . . so if we go on trying to keep people alive, we won’t have enough money to kill people! I get it now.
I mean, let’s be brutally honest, between a decrepit aircraft carrier or your grandmother, which one can be retrofitted?
“It’s going to literally crush the system . . . ” Yeah, and if it doesn’t, he’ll do it himself. He’ll have to do something because, if things continue like this, one day we won’t even know where our next nuclear warhead’s coming from.
David Cote is a sharp cookie who knows that the first rule of business is you have to pick the battles you can win, and this is a definite “win” for all the defense contractors, because elderly sick people can’t fight back that hard.
Thank God CBS News decided to ask a bank chairman and a defense contractor what the problems are with our debt and deficit. It turns out what is bankrupting our country is the government spending that those guys can’t get their hands on. If I were a cynic, I would call these two guys criminal assholes. But I’m an optimist, so I choose to believe they will all die and come back as Mel Gibson’s girlfriend, or worse, Joe Scarborough’s co-host.
GREENSPAN STILL WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING
“There is a general view out there that somehow we are gonna solve this [economic collapse] without pain; there is no conceivable scenario in which that is true. Cutting government spending will cause some retraction in economic activity, and according to the IMF . . . increasing taxes curtail economic activity, so do expenditure cuts, but significantly less.”
—Alan Greenspan, captain of the U.S. economy, who definitely did not “go down with the ship”
Here’s a question: Why the fuck do we keep asking the people who created this economic crisis how to fix this economic crisis? And why do we listen to them when they suggest the exact same things they were saying before?
And yet, here’s Alan Greenspan—easily one of the top five people most directly responsible for the economic meltdown. Presumably the next guest will be a Mexican druglord on how he suggests we fix the entire Juarez bugaboo.
By the way, Greenspan is citing an assessment from the IMF, an organization which has consistently sided with banks over people. It’s sort of like begging the question—but closer to sexually pleasuring the question.
When is everyone going to get that Alan Greenspan is not an objective economist? He, by his own admission, comes to his understanding of the economy from a deep objectivist philosophy (not to be confused with actually being objective). It’s the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and pretty much every entitled asshole I’ve ever met. Yeah, this is the “Greed is Good” thought process—which, by the way, Greenspan came by honestly when he was Ayn Rand’s lover, which, if you’ve seen either of these people—ick. Man, she must have been some lover, because I, for one have never sexed someone so good that it altered her worldview.
To be fair, I’ve certainly sexed a few girls poorly enough to make them really question some basic assumptions.
My point is, Greenspan comes into every discussion of the economy wanting certain things to be true—that low taxes and less regulation make the world into a magical wonderland where everyone gets to live out their dreams.
Let’s take one more look at his prescription for economic recovery.
“There is a general view out there that somehow we are going to solve this [economic collapse] without pain; there is no conceivable scenario in which that is true.”
See what he did there, he said that for sure, definitely, no doubt about it, he’s 1000% certain that there will be pain for people in order for us to get out of this mess. But then says:
“Cutting government spending will cause some retraction in economic activity, and according to the IMF . . . increasing taxes curtail economic activity, so do expenditure cuts, but significantly less.”
Great, more tax cuts for millionaires, and the rest of us can go pound sand.
Remember all that inevitable pain he was talking about? Turns out only the working class and the poor need to feel any pain to get us out; once again Greenspan found a way to spare the rich any pain, damage, responsibility, or consequence for anything. When I hear objectivist philosophers get everything wrong, my philosophy objects to it.
SHITTY MEDIA—MARIA BARTIROMO STYLE
“Markets are built on confidence . . . they need to have confidence that there is a plan that will encourage businesses to create jobs.”
—Maria Bartiromo, CNBC business reporter
That’s one of those Republican talking points disguised as common sense—as sung by the mynah bird of financial journalism, Maria Bartiromo. She is a Wall Street stenographer and mouthpiece. Sorry, I mean she’s a CNBC business reporter who reports from the economic trenches. In fact, she is actually embedded with a squadron of criminally insane CEOs, last seen storming the beaches of East Hampton Long Island with Wall Street’s 82nd douchebag division.
I don’t think Maria has a penis, but she definitely has a huge set of balls saying that load of empty drivel. Corporations are not investing or hiring but are sitting on five trillion dollars, and Maria says it’s because they lack “confidence.” Hey, if five trillion dollars doesn’t give you confidence, I’d try dance lessons.
Pretty much since President Obama was elected, Republicans have been claiming that the economy is stalled because businesses won’t expand if they don’t know what’s going to happen next. They claimed it with the healthcare debate, and now they’re claiming it with tax policy . . . and it’s total and complete bullshit. Businesses hold off expansion when they don’t see a market to sustain expansion. That’s why you don’t see huge dream catcher factories.
But wait! This president put out a 700 billion dollar stimulus bill—a plan specifically to create jobs—and Republicans went crazy. He’s pushing another 400 billion dollars in stimulus, and the Republicans are crapping all over him.
And by the way—yes, confidence is a crucial element of the markets. But guess what? The private sector is sitting on roughly two trillion dollars and isn’t investing in the future. A few years ago, the private sector was investing like crazy—very confident—but with no capital to back up those investments. I’m just saying, maybe a little less confidence is appropriate.
If a friend was drunk and wiped out his motorcycle, Maria Bartiromo would conclude he doesn’t want to get back on that motorcycle because he’s anticipating a rise in gas prices. The point here is, don’t be friends with Maria Bartiromo, because that will be an awkward hospital visit.
She never asks a real question of anybody because, even though she is an economic reporter, she doesn’t understand economics or how to ask a good question.
“They need the government to give them some certainty, some clarity, so that business can actually put plans together for 2013 in terms of hiring plans,” stated Maria Bartiromo, business reporter/dipshit.
“I totally agree,” responded Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC professional know-nothing.
Oh yeah, Wall Street needs certainty, like the certainty JP Morgan Chase has when they lose billions of dollars and nobody in the company gets busted. Yes, Maria Bartiromo does seem like she’s full of crap, but that’s only because we’re not Andrea Mitchell.
The only thing Wall Street hates more than uncertainty is telling the truth. And how do they know that it is uncertainty that is keeping corporations from hiring? Because they asked CEOs and Wall Street criminals (in Andrea’s case, she also asks the former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who was so good at his job he silently watched as the U.S. economy deregulated the banks and drove slowly of a cliff), and they all keep saying “Certainty! We need certainty!”
Do they ever ask anyone else besides multi-millionaires who are looking for more tax breaks? Like Paul Volcker? Or Paul Krugman? Or anyone named Paul?
They sure didn’t ask Mark Haines of CNBC. He was the last of the real reporters who questioned Wall Street and CEOs, instead of repeating their talking points. Here Mark Haines clears up this “business-needs-confidence-and-certainty” canard:
“It has nothing to do with confidence; companies hire when they see more demand for their goods and services, period, the end. When business picks up, they hire—if business doesn’t pick up, they don’t hire.”
I would love to play that on a projection screen outside of Maria Bartiromo’s apartment window at full volume for a month.
“Don’t think that the Bangladeshi people who perished didn’t want or need those jobs . . . I know we like to victimize everyone in this country, particularly when it comes to for-profit motivation, which is being assaulted. But, I think it is . . . an amazing stretch, to pin this on Wal-Mart. The unions in this country are desperate.”
—Capitalism spokesman Charles Payne, reacting to a factory fire in Bangladesh that killed 112 workers after mangers ordered workers back to their stations when the fire alarm went off
When a clothing manufacturer “outsources” its production and jobs to a third-world country, it means they can make boatloads more money if they stop paying their workers a living wage and send their jobs to a country without the hassles of government regulations that keep workplaces safe.
It’s the new American way: We screw our own citizens out of good-paying jobs by turning them into shitty jobs and shipping them overseas.
So in one of the factories that makes our clothes with slave labor and no workplace protections, there was a fire that killed 112 people.
People with a conscience reacted to this tragedy by contemplating the true price of things. Luckily, people without a conscience had Charles Payne to represent them.
I want to go over Charles Payne’s statement to better understand it.
“I don’t think something like this will happen again . . .”
Huh? This factory might as well invite Great White to come play, because as long as people can still get Nikes for twenty bucks, there ain’t gonna be sprinkler systems in these labor mills.
“Don’t think those people in Bangladesh who perished didn’t want or need those jobs as well. . . .”
AAAAAAHHHHH!!! That’s the point, you myopic fuck! People who desperately need jobs will put up with conditions they should not. It’s their desperation that is being exploited.
“You know, I know we like to victimize everyone in this country, especially when it comes to the for-profit motivation which is being assaulted in this country—”
Man, that is so true! Capitalism is such a victim here. When will people stop victimizing large, highly profitable multi-national corporations? Those people have feelings too . . . unfortunately none of those feelings are basic human decency—but still.
“You know, it’s a tragedy, but I think it’s a stretch—an amazing stretch, to try to sort of pin this on Wal-Mart . . .”
I don’t know if it’s that much of a stretch . . . . I mean, I know it’s a complex web, but let me see if I can connect the dots:
– Wal-Mart hires Company X to make clothes for cheap because it is located in Bangladesh, where workers can be paid shit with no safety protections.
—Because they have no safety standards, Company X has a fire.
Wow. That was a lot fewer dots to connect than I expected.
“I’m not here as an apologist for Wal-Mart—”
Good thing you said that, cuz it sounded so much like an apology up ‘til now.
“But I am here as something—as a spokesperson for capitalism and the American Dream, and I think for a lot of people, this is a step in the right direction—”
What the fuck?! What is a step in the right direction? Roasting garment workers? What direction do you think is right—a direction in which we can all accept burned human beings as just the cost of doing business? This could just be me, but I don’t think that’s a good direction.
And this guy is called a spokesman of capitalism and the American Dream? Someone should have interviewed more applicants before appointing him. This guy is the spokesman for the American Dream in the same way George Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch captain.
THE EXPENSIVE FREE MARKET
The idea of a free market is bullshit. It is one of those things that never was, yet some people think it has always been, but it hasn’t, cuz it isn’t and it never was.
When economists speak of free markets, they are referring to economies where consumers can choose products and services uncoerced, and prices aren’t set by the government. But lots of people think it means completely unregulated capitalism. No regulation at all, zero, nada, nil, zilch. But that’s not what it means.
These same type of people talk about the free market as if it was invented by Jesus or something, and is therefore the most moral way to run an economy. Literally, they equate capitalism with morality.
Do you know these people? To them, the free market means no government regulation, and any regulation on business transactions must be immoral. This kind of thinking leads these same nitwits to the conclusion that other forms of economies are somehow inherently evil. Not figuratively evil, but LITERALLY evil, like FROM THE DEVIL evil.
We hear them speak about the free market as if it had existed in nature somewhere, and humans stumbled upon it, and so we use it in the United States, because this is Jesus’ favorite country, and he’d wanted us to have it. To these people they see any regulation as unnatural or artificial—a perversion of nature. And in their heads, perversion sounds like sex, so they think it has to be a sin.
What these people fail to understand is that there is no such thing as a FREE MARKET. It doesn’t exist in any form anywhere. All markets are regulated. The only ones that aren’t are run by pirates.
And markets, all markets, are invented by humans to serve their societies, not the other way around. Markets are here to serve us; we are not here to serve them. And if a market we invented to serve us isn’t doing such a good job anymore, we can change the market!
A lot of those same people make the mistake of equating democracy with capitalism. They are not the same thing. Capitalism is just one form of an economy, just like democracy is one form of government. In a democracy, people get to choose the kind of economy they want, and in America we chose capitalism. REGULATED capitalism.
Regulations, good regulations, help economies run and work better. If we didn’t have effective regulations on Wall Street, the bankers could create serial bubble after serial bubble and crash our economy. But who would be stupid enough to allow that to happen?
In fact, it turns out that regulating business is the RESPONSIBILITY of government. The Supreme Court in the Munn decision said:
“Property does become clothed with a public interest when used in a manner to make it of public consequence, and affect the community at large. When, therefore, one devotes his property to a use in which the public has an interest, he, in effect, grants to the public an interest in that use, and must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good . . .”
That means that if you want to do your business in and around my community or do business that will affect others . . . like giving them cancer, or asthma, or causing all the fish to die and the beaches to turn black . . . well then, those others get to have a say in your business through our elected representatives.
And guess what? Everybody is for regulation—it’s just a matter of how much. Don’t believe me? Then you think it is okay for someone to advertise a product for one price but change it when the person gets to the store? Or how about six-year-old children mining coal, is that cool? Or getting orange-flavored grout when you thought you purchased shaving cream? Or unknowingly wearing clothes made of Strychnine? Or buying a computer that doesn’t include an eleven-year-old to assemble it?
So, we’re all for regulation. Of course, I could be totally wrong about the economics I spewed here, but those people who are against regulated markets still bug the fuck out of me. If only gasoline had more lead in it.
DIVERGING
Nothing puts my teeth on edge more than hearing scruffy-chinned college students blaming corporations for every ill in the world. Mainly because they have a point.
In the United States, corporations are, legally speaking, people. The main reason for this legality is for protecting employees, officers, and investors from direct litigation. It’s actually an important construct for successful capitalism. Unfortunately, this has turned corporations into autonomous entities not unlike Frankenstein’s monster (from the movie, not the book).
Corporations have a single purpose: profit.
In the case of publicly owned corporations, the drive toward profit is amped to dangerous levels. After all, if a company fails to meet profit expectations, the share values might plummet, and the whole thing could fall apart, thus depriving a vice president of another jet. So quarter after quarter, the monster gets hungrier and hungrier.
One might say that a corporation will do anything legal to make money, but this wouldn’t be entirely accurate. Corporations routinely calculate the costs of illegal and unethical activities, and if the profits exceed the malfeasance, then scum-baggery it is! Remember, corporations are amoral entities by design.
Adding to this problem is our political system—which I hear is more than a little vulnerable to influence. Most congressmen will easily admit that they spend at least as much time raising campaign funds as they do congressional business. Even local elections have become dangerously expensive affairs. After the McCain/Feingold Act, which limited individual contributions, the only source of serious campaign funds became large corporations. And so here we are.
On one hand, we have giant, amoral companies constantly pursuing their limited interests—on the other hand, we have politicians eagerly pursuing huge mountains of campaign cash. The only thing that stops these companies from polluting the air and water, exploiting its workers, and kicking puppies is the federal government.
Anyone see a problem here? So now, liberal or conservative, every candidate has to take corporate money from the very companies that they’ll have to later regulate. In a strange coincidence, pretty much every serious regulatory agency has been slowly shrunk over the last thirty years.
Nothing I’ve just written is a big mystery. As I pointed out earlier, filthy hippie college students can figure it out over bong hits. Do you know who else figured it out? Pat Buchanan! Pat FUCKING Buchanan, the goodest, oldest good ol’ boy of all time. The guy who can deny evolution and be racist in one sentence. For real, here’s what Buchanan said on Morning Joe:
“It’s a simple fact that the interests of corporate America and the interests of the country have diverged. If General Electric is building plants in the United States, that’s good for America. But if they’re going to make themselves more efficient by shutting down a plant here and opening it up in China or Mexico or somewhere else, that may be good for G.E. and its shareholders, stockholders like me—but it is not good for America; it is not good for the workers of America, and that’s what’s killing these unions. It’s Republicans as well as Democrats who are in the back pocket of the business roundtable, authorizing them to go abroad and produce there, and export free to the United States of America.”
Can you believe that? It was accurate and concise. After I heard that clip, I thought I had been kidnapped by aliens and put into an alternate reality experiment. But no . . . sadly no. Funny how on Morning Joe, they take turns being straightforward and rational for a segment or two, but never all at the same time.
OK, exact same show, moments later, Jack Welch gets to talk. For those of you who don’t know, Jack Welch is the real-life Gollum. I would not be surprised if it comes out that he was a G.E.-manufactured puppet turned into a real boy by the power of greed. That boy then grew up to be a million years old and run G.E. from 1981 to 2001. Since then, he’s become one of the most vocal defenders of unchecked capitalism in the U.S. Here’s his two cents on the matter:
“. . . look, I think in general, if G.E. didn’t move—or G.M, I.B.M., or anybody else, if you don’t be competitive, no consumer in America says, ‘Let me see, I’m gonna buy this refrigerator or something from G.E., cuz it’s made here, even though it costs a hundred dollars more than the one from Samsung or the one from L.G.’ . . . If G.E. stays in these high-cost plants and makes something and says ‘I made it for America! Buy it!’ [the American people will say] ‘Sorry, I’m taking the one next to it.’”
Unfortunately, he’s right, too. Capitalism depends as much on the amorality of consumers as the amorality of companies. The overwhelming evidence is that American consumers will buy the slave labor shirt from God-knows-where because it’s three dollars cheaper than the semi-slave-labor shirt from right here in the Good Old U.S. of A-holes.
What Jack Welch isn’t saying is that appropriate regulatory, trade, and tax laws could solve many of the problems caused by outsourcing. We could, for example, make it illegal to sell goods in this country which have been made by slaves. Wouldn’t that be nice? We could also restructure our corporate tax law so that a company like G.E. can’t hide billions of dollars overseas. Of course, none of this will happen, because G.E. and all the rest of the large multinational corporations pay for U.S. elections.
So, to be fair, we hate corporations at least as much as all the public officials who’ve been coerced out of their fiduciary responsibilities. And to be fair to most Americans, economically speaking, they don’t have a choice in what products they can purchase, with their jobs paying so little because of competition with overseas corporate plantations.
So, when President Obama—a guy I voted for twice, a guy the Right routinely calls a socialist—when this president says things like this, I get a little irked:
“. . . that is, we act like grown-ups. And when we are in negotiations like this, that everybody gives a little bit, compromises a little bit, in order to do the people’s business.”
That’s a statement he made from the debt ceiling negotiations . Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the “compromises” to which the president is alluding are public entitlements; particularly Social Security and Medicare. You know, the things that aren’t important at all and no one likes.
Moving on, the following week President Obama said this during his State of the Union address:
“The stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.”
So then why do we have to cut Social Security? Seems that if the economy is down, then we have to cut Social Security. But if the economy comes “roaring back,” then we still have to cut Social Security.
And the fact that the stock market came roaring back would have been comforting if it weren’t for the fact that, in 2008, we learned that most of the stock market is just pretend. Still, can’t hate profits; can’t hate a growing economy. That means a more stable tax base, so we can pay for things like Social Security and Medicare, right?
They say the Great Recession officially ended in 2009, yet the economy stagnates with worrying unemployment levels, fewer people participating in the workforce, and incomes which are decisively lower than before the economic crash.
A recent report from Sentier Research found that the median annual household income of Americans is getting lower and lower after every successive quarter. For many Americans, incomes aren’t just stagnant, they’re falling—along with their purchasing power and standard of living.
So, just to be clear: corporate profits up; the lower and middle class, down. And as that is happening, our president is talking about giving away entitlements (which, by the way, aren’t entitlements—you pay into Social Security just as you pay into Medicare).
Did I mention they keep calling this guy a socialist?
JACK, ASS
“Large, publicly owned corporations are insane criminals, and our government is abetting their crimes.”
—me
Remember how former G.E. President Jack Welch was defending outsourcing? OK, keep that in mind. The other part of outsourcing, the less obvious part, is moving a corporate headquarters overseas. Actually, not really moving the headquarters overseas, but moving certain legal entities to different countries in order to avoid United States corporate taxes. Look, I’m not an accountant (according to my wife, I’m barely a man), so I can’t explain the exact mechanisms, but the result is obvious:
“Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts—from 30% of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6% in 2009 . . . At 35%, the corporate tax rate is nominally among the world’s highest. Yet because of ‘a bounty of subsidies, shelters, and special breaks,’ most companies actually pay less than competitors abroad—often far less.”
Yeah, no kidding. So, just to be clear, these companies exist here. Their corporate officers are here. A huge share of their profits are made here. However, they have moved their lowest paying jobs overseas; removing them from the American economy. Also, they’ve moved as much of their tax revenue away from the United States as possible. It’s like they’re still living with their parents, but refusing to pitch in for the groceries or even be nice to their mom.
But let’s get back to G.E.:
According to the New York Times story, G.E. reported U.S. profits of $5.1 billion in 2010 (and $14.2 billion worldwide). “What is its American tax bill?” asked the Times. “None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.” The company accomplished this by “an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.”
And I will take a break from writing to scream and throw things . . . and we’re back. If you didn’t think this couldn’t get more infuriating, consider this:
G.E. makes a huge percent of their domestic profits from GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS. General Electric makes shit like jet fighter engines and nuclear triggers. In 2010, the United States government paid G.E. over $3 billion, and yet they don’t have the basic decency to pay their taxes. That’s just impolite.
G.E. is just one example—an egregious one to be sure—as this is a systemic problem. But if you ever hear a conservative claiming they are an isolated case, you have my permission to punch them in the balls.
Now . . . if you’re not already dangerously furious, let’s add another layer:
A survey also found a majority of Republicans and independents favor cutting government spending over raising taxes on businesses, while Democrats are evenly divided.
Yup, as we’ve said before, large corporations get government to do their business through lobbying, campaign finance, and other tricks of influence. In this case, policy makers have become corporate officers in charge of lowering the expense of taxes. For example, here’s Senator Ron Johnson, Republican from Wisconsin, on the matter of G.E.’s 0 percent effective tax rate:
“We have to be concerned about what the business environment is in the U.S. here. I mean, we can’t afford to have the highest tax rate in the world. I mean, we have got to make America a very attractive place for business investment. You know, it’s not like we have a choice to compete; we have to compete globally. So we’ve got to bench-mark our tax rates, our regulatory environment, against the world if we expect to have this economy growing. And let’s face it, in order to get out of this budgetary hole, the number one solution is economic growth.”
And then, the good senator was asked, “. . . on tax reform for corporations, what rate do you think you have to bring it down to actually get, to become competitive, in that when you look at a company like G.E., the effective tax rate is 0?”
And his response:
“Again, those are individual companies. I think overall, we really can’t be looking at a corporate tax rate higher than 25%, because that’s kind of the world average. So, you know, we’re sitting up there at 35%, and that’s just the wrong signal, and we’ve gotta create a competitive environment here in the U.S.”
It is clear this isn’t just a problem of “individual companies.” However, by claiming it’s not a pervasive problem, the senator doesn’t have to address the real question: how do you get companies to pay even close to the taxes they should?
And should major corporations be paying 35%? Here are just a few of the benefits a company gets by operating in the United States: our stable and strong currency, highways, ports, law enforcement, education, and the protections of the largest military in the world. It seems like a pretty equitable deal to me. In fact, it seems pretty fucking competitive. But they’re not even paying close to 35%; in G.E.’s case, they’re not paying anything. I’m no math whiz, but I’m pretty sure if we drop the corporate tax rate as the senator demands, we would all end up paying G.E. just to exist.
Pardon me while I wave my American flag made in China.
*Didn’t really say this.