While the world suffers, Wall Street pays itself record bonuses, larger even than the peak year of 2007, by taxing the productive economy to maintain an extravagant lifestyle. These bonuses are being paid with your money, and your children's money, if you hold US dollars.
And while this happens, the US credit card banks are raising interest rates to 20+% even on customers with excellent payment records and jobs which is certainly usury, and with an arrogant impunity. The insider trading scandals and tales of government graft yet to be told are so blatant and shocking that only a captive mainstream press keeps them from being investigated.
The rest of the world looks on in shock and amazement. What has gone wrong with America? What are they thinking? America has not only lost the high ground, it is sliding into a ditch.
While Americans are pacified by bread and circuses, the rest of the world looks at a painful reality show in the States, a country in a death spiral of corrupt leadership and public apathy. If it was Zimbabwe or Iceland there would still be sympathy for the people, but far less concern.
A deflationist friend was railing about the US slide into bankruptcy, and I could not help but ask, "What happens to the paper of a bankrupt company, or country?"
Where indeed will the dollar gain its long anticipated strength, its renaissance of value?
Or yes, from "less dollars" through debt destruction. Mutant monetarism gone mad, an argument worthy of Herr Goebbels. The dollar will rise in value by immersing itself in a pool of corruption, and by destroying its shareholders, those who hold their savings in it, while oligarchs loot the financial system. Unless the US can turn its trade balance positive overnight, while raising interest rates, and maintaining a growing domestic economy based on consumption, it is not going to happen. The US is running out of degrees of freedom.
Wall Street holds the US public and government hostage by threatening financial armageddon if they do not get what they wish. We would anticipate a similar threat to the global economy based on dollar debt at some point, asking for a global monetary regime controlled out of New York and London, with perhaps a few associates.
Nothing goes straight up or down. There will be more sucker rallies and bubbles, but the train is starting to come off the rails a little more with each wrenching turn of this cycle.
The banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, and balance restored to the economy before there can be any sustained recovery.
Finfacts Eire
Wall Street firms set to break new records in 2009 with pay rising to $140bn; Bailed-out insurance giant AIG paid “retention bonuses” to kitchen staff
By Finfacts Reporting Team
Oct 14, 2009 - 6:10:22 AM
Wall Street firms are set to break new records with employee pay set to rise to $140bn this year. Meanwhile, it has been reported that the bailed-out insurance giant AIG paid “retention bonuses” to kitchen staff earlier this year from a $168m pot, that was ostensibly designed to keep staff from leaving the government controlled firm.
Workers at 23 top investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers and stock and commodities exchanges can expect to earn even more than they did in the peak year of 2007, according to an analysis of securities filings for the first half of 2009 and revenue estimates through year-end by The Wall Street Journal.
The Journal reports that total compensation and benefits at the publicly traded firms it analyzed, are on track to increase 20% from last year's $117bn -- and to top 2007's $130bn payout. This year, employees at the companies will earn an estimated $143,400 on average, up almost $2,000 from 2007 levels.
Average compensation per employee at investment bank Goldman Sachs, is set to reach about $743,000 this year, double last year's $364,000 and up 12% from about $622,000 in 2007, according to the Journal analysis...
