1. Supreme Court kills public discourse, 2. lobbying money of the biggest banks, 3. Goldman Sachs bonuses, 4. Obama decides to try out breaking up the banks in a few ways.
1. Public discourse getting crushed: “A divided Supreme Court on Thursday swept away decades of legislative efforts to restrict the role of corporations in election campaigns, ruling that severe restrictions on corporate spending are inconsistent with the First Amendment’s protection of political speech. ”
2. The HIll: “Eight of the nation’s largest banks spent nearly $26 million lobbying federal lawmakers in 2009, during one of the most tumultuous periods in financial history… The banks spent nearly 6 percent more on federal lobbying last year compared with 2008, according to a review of congressional lobbying records. The banks spent $25.8 million on lobbying in 2009 and $24.4 million in 2008, the two years at the heart of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
3. Goldman Sachs bonuses announced today. In a year or two, we will forget what caused the crisis. But for now, GS has heard the public outcry a little bit and lowered their bonuses. From some public interest groups: “This reveals more than simply hubris. It shows that Wall Street believes that nothing has changed. The terrible truth is that so far, thanks to their own continued success in lobbying for their narrow interests, even as they have benefited from trillions in public support, they are right. Income disparity between executives and ordinary workers. While Wall Street paid record bonuses and compensation in 2009 to its top executives and traders,[6] rank and file workers continued to get squeezed. Like other hard-working Americans, thousands of front line bank workers were laid off or had their pay cut last year. In fact, average real hourly wages for nonsupervisory workers in financial services increased only one cent between January and September of 2009,[7] even though total compensation at the top six banks last year was up 17% from a year earlier.[8] The record bonuses did not trickle down to ordinary bank workers. This had also been true in the boom years before the collapse. Between 2001 and 2007, average compensation overall at the top six banks and their predecessors did not even keep up with inflation, increasing only 15%. But at the same time, the top five executives at each of the six banks saw their average compensation more than double from $9.8 million in 2001 to $22.5 million in 2007.”
4. WE have been leading on the fight for breaking up the banks – Obama hears us now that Brown won the Senate seat. Bloomberg: “President Barack Obama today will propose limiting the size and trading activities of financial institutions as a way to reduce risk-taking, an administration official said.” AP: “But his announcement Thursday will broaden those measures, particularly by endorsing Volcker’s proposal to restrict proprietary trading by commercial banks. Such a limit would separate commercial banks from investment banks, a line that was blurred a decade ago by the repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. That restriction would affect some of the nation’s biggest banks, including banking giants Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.”
