Guest Author - Tony Daltorio
This past week showed that despite the continuing economic crisis, both Wall Street and Washington continue to conduct their business as if everything in the economy was rosy. Here are four examples:
1) Wall Street legend Bernie Madoff was arrested by the FBI. Upon his arrest, Mr. Madoff did admit that his investment firm was indeed operating what was in effect a $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Now if only the other casino operators on Wall Street would fess up!
2) John Thain is the man who headed Merill Lynch before the firm was bought by Bank of America. Mr. Thain wasn't at Merill very long before the company basically collapsed and they were forced to sell themselves to Bank of America just to stay alive.
Despite this "leadership", Mr. Thain continues to press Bank of America for his annual bonus of $10 million! He believes that he absolutely "deserves" the bonus. The arrogance and sense of entitlement from Wall Street "leaders" knows no bounds.
3) The US Senate voted down the auto company bailout bill. This was after strong efforts by Wall Street lobbyists to do so. I guess Wall Street wants all the taxpayers money for themselves! The good news is that the Bush administration may give the auto companies money taken from the $700 billion bailout of financial companies anyways.
4) Recent good news has been that FDIC head Sheila Bair has become a strong advocate of reworking mortgages so that struggling homeowners will benefit greatly. She has begun to push through such programs. The bad news is that she won't be at the FDIC much longer. Why?
Because incoming Treasury secretary Tim Geithner says that his first order of business will be to remove Ms. Bair from the FDIC. He feels that the mortgages are being reworked too strongly in favor of consumers instead of in favor of Wall Street. No surprise, since he is a Wall Street insider. I continue to repeat - the choice of Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary by President-Elect Obama is a huge mistake!
I'm sure that history buffs will recall the warning that President Eisenhower gave to the American people about an overly powerful "military-industrial complex". Currently, Wall Street is being taken care of, it seems, but nobody else. I wonder what Ike would have thought about the powerful "financial-political complex" that seems to be running the country now? And poorly, I might add.
