Wall Street Banksters Want Us To Think Their Dominance Is Inevitable And Permanent

I read in The Hill today that Gary Peter's bill taxing the AIG bonuses has been buried by the "more deliberative, less passionate," and way more bribed-- most senators get millions and most House members get just hundreds of thousands from Big Finance-- Senate. And the Senate Democratic leadership did it with Obama's team pushing them in that direction.

Despite the public outcry over $165 million in bonuses awarded at troubled insurer AIG, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) showed little inclination Monday to bring the explosive issue to the floor this week or next. Instead, Reid is likely to delay action on executive compensation until late April, after the Senate returns from a two-week recess starting April 4.

The lack of enthusiasm to expedite the bonus legislation comes after Obama said over the weekend that he didn’t think it was a good idea for Congress to target individuals with tax proposals.

“As a general proposition, I think you certainly don’t want to use the tax code … to punish people,” Obama said in the interview with “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday.

Earlier today, we heard a clear explanation from Gary about why the bonus take back is so important.

"People are sick of the double standard in which working class and middle class workers are treated differently than financial industry executives... Thousands of UAW members are making sacrifices & renegotiating their contracts right now as a condition of receiving federal support."

This morning the ultimate media mouthpiece for the Wall Street/bankster elite-- the Wall Street Journal crowed over the slap down of the unwashed, angry masses by "their own" representatives. The Obama Administration supposedly realizes, giving the power of Big Business, they can't get anything done without the banksters cooperation. In other words, the banksters will destroy him and his administration (and the rest of us), if he screws with them.

In recent days, in spite of public furor over huge bonuses paid at American International Group Inc., the administration has concluded that it needs the private sector to play a central role in fixing the economy. So over the weekend, the White House worked to tone down its Wall Street bashing and to win support from top bankers for the bailout plan announced Monday, which will rely on public-private investments to soak up toxic assets.

But weeks of searing criticism by politicians and the public had left bankers leery of working with the government. After brainstorming about what to do about that problem, the White House resolved to try to take control of the debate, according to several administration officials. In weekend television appearances, President Barack Obama and other administration officials tempered their criticisms of the financial sector.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his colleagues worked the phones to try to line up support on Wall Street for the plan announced Monday. They told executives they don't favor using the tax code to retroactively penalize specific individuals who had received bonuses, according to people familiar with the calls. They asked officials to sign on "in pencil, not ink," and to "validate" or "express support" for the plan, these people say.

Some bankers say they turned the conversations into complaints about the antibonus crusade consuming Capitol Hill. Some have begun "slow-walking" the information previously sought by Treasury for stress-testing financial institutions, three bankers say, and considered seeking capital from hedge funds and private-equity funds so they could return federal bailout money, thereby escaping federal restrictions.

"Our great challenge is to make clear that we can't have an economic recovery without Wall Street, but these AIG bonuses make it that much harder," said David Axelrod, President Obama's top political aide, in a recent interview.

...Early in the Obama presidency, top banking executives were frozen out of internal discussions about how to fix the economy. In its first few weeks in office, the administration closely hewed to the anticorporate sentiment that was a campaign hallmark. As the White House began filling top economic posts, it largely avoided market veterans, or applied strings to their employment... [A]s the furor [over the AIG bonuses] intensified, Mr. Obama's words to Congress-- "we cannot govern out of anger"-- seemed to take on less importance. Last week, he was asked by reporters on the White House South Lawn whether anger was getting in the way of pushing through banking reforms. "I don't want to quell anger," he replied. "I think people are right to be angry. I'm angry."

Bankers were shell-shocked, especially when Congress moved to heavily tax bonuses. When administration officials began calling them to talk about the next phase of the bailout, the bankers turned the tables. They used the calls to lobby against the antibonus legislation, Wall Street executives say. Several big firms called Treasury and White House officials to urge a more reasonable approach, both sides say. The banks' message: If you want our help to get credit flowing again to consumers and businesses, stop the rush to penalize our bonuses.

Unless some of these people wind up in prison all we'll ever hear from them is how the unwashed masses are threatening their children with piano wire and how they can't even fly their taxpayer subsidized private jets in peace anymore. Take a look at how the new Gallup poll measures people rating Americans give the main actors in this tragedy:


In his Washington Post column this morning, career-long corporate shill George Will called the members of Congress who voted for Gary Peters' tax on bonuses "the braying of 328 yahoos." That's predictable. What do you think we should do about the members of Congress-- and the Wall Street elite and the media-- who think it's appropriate for the taxpayers to pay hundreds of millions of dollars so wealthy corporate executives can get even richer? I think we know where California Congresswoman Maxine Waters stands on that. She just kicked Geithner's ass at the Financial Services Committee hearing today. Looks like she's not a big fan of the banksters, especially not Goldman Sachs. Also at that hearing Geither and Bernanke told Congress there is no Plan B-- just the Wall Street way:




The Banksters Fight Back

The prediction: another million jobs will be lost if the criminal banksters don't get to keep their taxpayer-funded bonuses.

The predictor: Michael Feroli, an economist at JP Morgan

Question: What would happen if all the criminals on Wall Street were rounded up and thrown in prison? I think a lot of people would like that... a lot.