HAS OBAMA PUNKED US?
“ The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy.” NEW YORK TIMES
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“According to a survey cited in the New York Times, overall compensation in “financial services” will rise 5 percent in 2010, with employees in some businesses, like asset management, getting increases of 15 percent. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have reportedly set aside $89.54 billion for year-end bonuses.”
“I’M NOT HERE TO PUNISH BANKS!” Barack Obama from the floor of the U.S. Senate.
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WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
BARACK OBAMA HAS COLLECTED NEARLY TWICE AS MUCH MONEY AS JOHN McCAIN
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Before the election of 2008, the special interests and banksters pumped even more money into Obama than Hillary or McAmnesty! They knew their man! He’d already had a long substantial history of corruption and serving the special interests in Chicago politics.
How could they have done better than their man Obama? He’s protected their rape and pillage, bonuses, and declared to the nation from the floor of the nation the senate that he was “not here to punish banks!”… If fact Obama could have added he was there to PROTECT bankster criminals, pay their bonuses out of their staggering bailouts, promise no (real) regulation, and assure them that despite their massive crimes against this nation’s economy that has caused the life savings as invested in millions of homes, would go unpunished.
AND THE CORRUPTION ROLLS ON AND ON… as it always does in this nation! Just like the poverty, open borders so illegals get our jobs, and socializing corporate pillage!
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US corporate executives back at the trough
16 November 2010
America’s corporate and financial elite has returned to the feeding trough and is collecting huge salaries and bonuses while tens of millions of workers in the US continue to face levels of social misery not seen since the Great Depression.
Annual bonuses rose by 11 percent for executives at the 450 largest US corporations last fiscal year, according to a new survey published by the Wall Street Journal. Overall, median compensation—including salaries, bonuses, stocks, options and other incentives—rose by three percent to $7.3 million in 2009.
The increased payouts were the result of soaring profits at top companies, which doubled from a year earlier, leading to a 29 percent increase in total shareholder returns. This, in turn, was the direct result of the offensive that corporate America has waged against the working class, with the full backing of the Obama administration and both big business parties. Over the course of the last two years companies have slashed payrolls, wages and benefits, replaced full-time workers with temporary and casual workers earning poverty level wages and ratcheted up productivity.
“Cost-cutting” and “streamlining” were the principal pursuits of all the CEOs pocketing large pay packages last year. The top five were: (1) Gregory B. Maffei of Liberty Media Corp., who got $87.1 million in compensation last year, four times his 2008 package; (2) Larry Ellison, Oracle’s billionaire founder, who received $68.6 million; (3) Ray R. Irani of Occidental Petroleum Corp., who got $52.2 million; (4) Yahoo’s Carol Bartz, who took in $44.6 million; and (5) Leslie Moonves from CBS, who got $39 million.
With the S&P 500 Index up 7.5 percent so far this year, top executives are expected to see even bigger compensation packages in 2010. “Many companies are beating earnings expectations, stock prices are up and performance is good, so bonuses will be good,” Mark Reilly, a partner with the Chicago-based Compensation Consulting Consortium LLC, told the Journal.
The payouts to the heads of media, energy and Internet firms pale in comparison, however, to the grotesques sums hedge fund managers and private equity traders will be paid when Wall Street issues its year-end bonuses. According to a survey cited in the New York Times, overall compensation in “financial services” will rise 5 percent in 2010, with employees in some businesses, like asset management, getting increases of 15 percent. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have reportedly set aside $89.54 billion for year-end bonuses.
In an article, entitled, “Wall Street Gets Its Groove Back, And Big Pay, Too,” the Times noted that the lavish watering holes in downtown Manhattan were packed with free-spending traders and investment bankers. John DeLucie, the chef and one of the owners of The Lion restaurant, “one of Greenwich Village’s newest hot spots,” told the newspaper that customers are buying vintage bottles of wine, including a 1982 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, which recently sold for $3,950. “We are seeing a lot of luxury purchases, like vintage Bordeaux, things that we haven’t seen sell well in a few years,” DeLucie told the Times.
Just two years after the financial breakdown that brought American and world capitalism to the brink of collapse, the ruling class is on the offensive against the working class in every part of the world. Arguing that no measures are permissible that undermine the “competitiveness” and “profitability” of the corporations and financial markets, capitalist governments in every country are demanding austerity, cost cutting and a “reduction in consumption.”
From the very beginning of its term in office, despite all the phony talk about “reining in CEO pay” and “regulating the banks,” the Obama administration has done everything to secure the fortunes of the financial elite, whose recklessness precipitated the 2008 crash. After handing over trillions to Wall Street, the White House engineered the forced bankruptcy and restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler, initiating a wave of wage and benefit cuts that has spread throughout the economy. Rejecting any government measures to hire the unemployed, the administration has deliberately kept jobless levels high in order to force workers to accept ever-lower wages.
US corporations—which are sitting on hoards of cash—are insisting they will not hire unless workers accept a permanent reduction in their living standards. In a paper delivered to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta meeting last Friday, University of Chicago economist Robert Shimer complained that wages were not falling fast enough and that only a 3-to-5 percent reduction in wages would result in “significant growth in employment.”
This was echoed by Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein—a liberal supporter of President Obama—whose op-ed piece last month, “Wage cuts hurt, but they may be the only way to get Americans back to work,” hailed the 50 percent pay reduction the United Auto Workers union imposed on half the workforce at GM’s Lake Orion, Michigan plant.
“The fundamental economic challenge facing the United States,” Pearlstein wrote, “is to get what we consume more in line with what we produce after years of living beyond our means.” With “our labor costs too high to be globally competitive,” Pearlstein insisted, “a further reduction in consumption and living standards is necessary to bring the U.S. economy back into balance.”
The Post columnist expressed his exasperation that workers were opposing his advice, noting that GM workers in Indianapolis defied the UAW and overwhelmingly rejected a wage-cutting deal. He insisted that capitalism left workers with no choice but to work for lower wages or not work at all.
In a revealing comment, Pearlstein says, “I’m sure many of you are reading this and thinking that if anyone is forced to take a pay cut to rebalance the economy, surely it ought to be overpaid investment bankers, corporate executives and newspaper columnists. That’s how things would work in a socialist paradise, but not in market economies, which are much better at producing efficiency than fairness.”
Indeed, that is how capitalism works, but it has nothing to do with “efficiency.” What is efficient about condemning millions to joblessness and poverty while society’s most basic needs—for decent housing, health care, education and infrastructure repairs—go unmet?
In all the talk about “over-consumption” the one thing that is never suggested is reducing the consumption of the ruling class, whose bankrupt capitalist system and criminal activities are responsible for the dire conditions facing the majority of the world’s population.
The only means to break the grip of this modern-day corporate and financial aristocracy is through the fight to reorganize economic life based on the principle of genuine social equality. This can begin only by the working class breaking from the Democrats and Republicans and building its own independent, socialist party.
Jerry White
WSWS.ORG…GET ON THEIR FREE NO ADS E-MAILS!
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Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses
BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY
Editorial Reviews
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
Congressman Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics.” And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
If you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
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Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers.
Investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:
* The Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell corporate profits and more government control
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics
If you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs, this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
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Praise for Obamanomics
“The notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs, taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author
“‘Every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how Washington really works.”
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama
“Every libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
—Congressman Ron Paul
“It’s understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately punishing everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as usual, which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to American History
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• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596986123
• ISBN-13: 978-1596986121
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HAS OBAMA PUNKED US?
“ The larger fear is that Obama might be just another corporatist, punking voters much as the Republicans do when they claim to be all for the common guy.” NEW YORK TIMES
*
US corporations squeezing more output from workers and paying lower wages
By Patrick O’Connor
12 August 2009
US Labor Department data released yesterday showed productivity up 6.4 percent in the second quarter, the largest gain since 2003 and higher than economists’ forecasts of 5.5 percent. Over the same period, workers’ compensation fell sharply.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics explained that productivity—which measures hourly output per employee—increased “due to hours worked declining faster than output.”
In other words, big business is using the rise in unemployment to extract greater output from employed workers through speedup and other forms of intensified exploitation.
Nonfarm productivity rose 6.4 percent as a result of output declining by 1.7 percent and total hours worked plummeting 7.6 percent.
Data also showed that real hourly employee compensation fell by 1.1 percent in the second quarter, or by 2.2 percent on an annualized basis. The combined impact of declining wages and rising productivity brought unit labor costs down by a huge 5.8 percent in the three months from April to June.
In manufacturing, quarterly productivity rose 5.3 percent, a result of output falling by 9.9 percent and hours by 14.4 percent. In the durable manufacturing sub-category, the output and hours decline was even greater—16.5 percent and 19.6 percent respectively.
The recent productivity boost, unlike that seen in previous periods, has involved no developments in productive technique. Mark Vitner of Wells Fargo Bank told Dow Jones Newswire that the second quarter gain “is almost entirely the result of cost-cutting, not improved ways of producing goods and providing services.”
Several commentators frankly admitted that the productivity boost was the product of intensified pressure on the working class. In a comment for Dow Jones’ MarketWatch, Tom Bernis wrote: “Anybody lucky enough to hang onto his or her job in this recession is working flat out to keep it. That’s one take on the latest US productivity numbers...
“The severity of the recession has pushed the hours worked to levels not seen since the mid-1990s, even as units of output have risen nearly 40 percent. So, with the economy essentially in ‘idle,’ it takes far fewer workers to keep things moving than nearly a decade-and-a-half ago. That’s good news for profits, but not so good for the unemployed.”
Ian Shepherdson, chief domestic economist for High Frequency Economics, added: “These are spectacular numbers and help explain why so many recently reporting companies have beaten earnings estimates.”
Bloomberg News highlighted DuPont, the third-biggest US chemical company, which last month announced a better-than-anticipated $417 million second quarter profit. This was achieved after outlining a strategy to cut fixed costs by $1 billion, partly by laying off 2,500 permanent workers and 10,000 contractors. “Our aggressive actions to improve productivity and reduce costs across the company are paying off,” Chief Executive Officer Ellen Kullman declared.
According to Time magazine’s Justin Fox, a recent report by the Goldman Sachs portfolio strategy team compared current corporate profits with previous periods. In an extraordinary finding, the researchers concluded that if financial companies, auto producers and utilities are excluded, corporations in the S&P 500 index had higher profit margins during the worst of the current crisis than they did during any point of the mid-1980s economic boom.
This conclusion points to the class character of the Obama administration and the social interests being served by its policies.
The economic policies advanced by successive Democratic and Republican administrations over the last three decades produced significant productivity increases at the same time that average real wages stagnated or declined. This led to an unprecedented shift in national income distribution, away from wages towards corporate profits, massively increasing social inequality.
These tendencies are accelerating, with the Obama administration, on behalf of the major corporations and banks, advancing a sweeping economic restructuring agenda aimed at permanently driving down workers’ wages and conditions. Every aspect of the administration’s agenda—from the bailout of the banks, to mass layoffs and wage and benefit concessions in the auto industry, to sweeping cuts in health care for workers and retirees—is directed towards protecting the ruling elite’s wealth at the expense of the majority of the population.
Obama sent a clear signal to big business with the restructuring of the auto industry. The federally supervised bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler involved the destruction of large sections of each company’s productive capacity, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, and the imposition of wages and conditions equivalent to those last experienced in the industry in the 1930s. This set the stage for an economy-wide corporate offensive against jobs, wages, and conditions, the initial results of which are reflected in the latest productivity and labor cost data.
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WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
BARACK OBAMA HAS COLLECTED NEARLY TWICE AS MUCH MONEY AS JOHN McCAIN
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
July 1st 2008
Wall Street firms have chipped in more than $9 million to Barack Obama. Zurga/Bloomberg
Wall Street is investing heavily in Barack Obama.
Although the Democratic presidential hopeful has vowed to raise capital gains and corporate taxes, financial industry bigs have contributed almost twice as much to Obama as to GOP rival John McCain, a Daily News analysis of campaign records shows.
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