Back in March I penned (errr, typed) a blog with a blaring title proclaiming the recession to be over. Yes, the statistics keep pouring in - exports are up, stock market up-a-plenty, unemployment down and corporate CEO earnings back in the ionosphere. Thank God! CEO pay was flat in 2009, and the poor bastards had to actually work - at keeping stock and bond holders convinced not to sell. Well the good times are back for these favored souls, and we can thank in order of importance: Bernanke the Fed chief, China, the federal government, the working slugs of America and the CEO's themselves.
The Fed? How about I give you all the billions you want, charge 0.0000001% interest and you can take the money and: bid up commodity prices, buy treasuries at 2.5%, loan it out at 5% or even buy steeply discounted mortgage backed securities for all Bernanke cares. Fucking hard NOT to make money in that game. In Arizona, CEO pay jumped 48% in 2010. The two old white fucks that run the local copper conglomerate Freeport-McMoRan made 43.8 and 47.5 million each - in just one year! Yeah, it was a tough slog too as copper prices quadrupled due to China needing (hoarding) metals and the rest of the commodities world jumping aboard for the ride. Thanks China. These money grubbers did nothing more than sit back and let the frenzied market drive the price of what they're selling thru the roof creating an artificial windfall for all those at the top. Oh yeah, I'm sure there were a lot of meetings and big decisions to be made and people to lay off. As Bush the Bonehead would say - "It's hard work"!
In a story on the adjacent page of the paper, thousands of people are wondering how they will manage to eat and find a place to live due to the cutbacks in state and local spending. Many are laid off, ex-middle class white people, not whiny black welfare exploiters.
Then there's the federal government. Reagan's trickle sideways idea, Senior Bush's continuing deregulation of everything, Clinton's signing off on the demise of the Glass-Stegall Act, Junior Bush's complete abandonment of the SEC enforcement efforts (Madoff loved it!) and now Obama's continuing ambivalence toward business and his failure to push tax-reform that would: 1) limit corporate welfare tax breaks, and 2) make hedge-fund billionaires pay the same fucking tax rates working people do. As Warren Buffett famously said - "My secretary pays a higher tax rate than I do". And the Supreme Court's recent ruling upholding the 1880's idea that a business is somehow a person and allowing limitless corporate campaign contributions to politicians. This shit isn't partisan, it's unbelievably unjust.
And the working slugs of American? Yes, we all had a hand in this. By voting against our own economic self-interest time and time again, we have reaped what we sowed. Let's see, I'm religious and Democrats are not, so I'm voting Republican. Let's see, I'm an atheist and Republicans are not, so I'm voting Democrat.
Which leaves the CEO's. Unconscionable pay and stock options granted to them by their buddies on the board and aided by the majority stockholders, who are almost always institutional outfits like pension plans, that say nothing as their board members hope to one day be on the board of the company who's stock they own.
Nobody is worth 47 million a year, unless they invent a cure for cancer. When that day comes, I will personally make every effort to find out which lab scientist making 75K a year actually made the discovery and make sure his name is included in a future blog. That's right, money can't buy everything!
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