CLINTON – OBAMA – TRUMPERNOMICS: STEAL FROM THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS and HAND IT TO THE SUPER RICH ON A SILVER PLATTER!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/05/clinton-obama-trumpernomics-rich-get.html
"The Wealth-X report shows
that the world’s billionaire population has grown by 15 percent, to 2,754
people, since 2016, and that the wealth of these billionaires “surged by
24 percent to a record level of $9.2 trillion,” equivalent to
12 percent of the gross domestic product of the entire planet."
Luxury jewelry retailer
Tiffany & Company’s profits surge
By
Isaac Finn
25 May 2018
The iconic luxury jewelry company Tiffany & Company announced
this week that profits over the first quarter of this year had experienced a
massive 53 percent increase to $142 million, compared to $93 million in 2017.
Following the announcement Wednesday, the company’s shares shot up by more than
23 percent.
The sudden increase in the company’s stock prices marked a 52-week
high, having increased by roughly 30 percent over the past 12 months. The
company now expects earnings per share of $4.50 to $4.70 for the year ending in
January 2019, compared to earlier estimates of earning per share of $4.25 to
$4.45.
Stock prices also rallied on the announcement that Tiffany’s is
initiating a new $1 billion stock buyback program to pad the pockets of its
wealthy shareholders.
The upsurge in Tiffany’s sales is the outcome of the creation of a
small but growing ultra-wealthy layer that can afford to spend thousands upon
thousands of dollars on bracelets, earrings, necklaces and other trinkets out
of the immiseration of millions of workers. In fact, jewelry retailers as a
group experienced a 13 percent increase in stocks following Tiffany’s earnings
report, while retail companies that have a base among more working-class shoppers,
such as Target and JCPenney, have experienced a fall in sales and their stock
value.
At the end of last year, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty
and human rights Philip Alston noted that the US is plagued with “soaring death
rates and family and community destruction wrought by prescription and other
drug addiction.” While a full 40 percent of American adults report that they
cannot cover a $400 emergency without going into debt, a small layer is able to
live an extremely opulent lifestyle.
The more than $1 billion squandered in just the first three months
of this year on a single company’s luxury items would cover over two-thirds of
the costs of replacing the toxic water infrastructure of Flint, Michigan. The
squandering of such resources on frivolous goods, while large sections of the
world’s population live without clean water and other essential services, is
the most blatant expression of the failure of capitalism.
Sales in the Americas, which is the company’s largest market, rose
by 9 percent to $425 million; in Europe, sales increased by 13 percent to $107
million, and sales in Japan increased by 17 percent to $151 million over the
course of a three-month period that ended on April 30. The Asia-Pacific market
experienced the largest growth, with sales skyrocketing by 28 percent to $329
million over the same period.
Tiffany’s total first-quarter net sales rose by 14.8 percent to
$1.03 billion, more than the estimated $959.4 million, according to Reuters.
Part of the increase is due to the tax windfall signed by Trump in December.
The company’s effective tax rate for the first quarter was 25.3 percent
compared to 31.7 percent last year.
The increase in sales is also a reflection of the ever-growing
hordes of money controlled by the upper echelons of the global population.
According to a recent report by Wealth-X, North American billionaires increased
their wealth by 22.8 percent to a total of $3.3 trillion and Asia’s
billionaires increased their wealth by 49.4 percent to a total of $2.4 trillion
in 2018.
Tiffany reported that the increase in sales was aided by more
tourists shopping in the US, as well as New Yorkers spending more on jewelry.
New York, where the company’s flagship store is located, is home to 103
billionaires. Same-store sales increased by 7 percent, more than double the 2.7
percent increase that was estimated by analysts.
Tiffany’s new CEO, Alessandro Bogliolo, stated in an earnings
release that the company was “particularly encouraged by the breadth of sales
growth across most regions and all product categories.” He also hailed a new ad
campaign, titled “Believe in Dreams,” for aiding sales and said the company
would continue to ramp up its ads for the rest of 2018 because the company is
“committed to reaching the sustainable growth potential of this legendary
brand.”
The company has also diversified into “everyday objects” and
luxury home goods to attract younger wealthy consumers that might otherwise go
to Tiffany’s competitors. These products include a $1,000 18-karat gold paper
clip bookmark and a sterling silver “coffee can” that costs $1,500. The store
also offers diamond-encrusted Swiss-made watches ranging in price from $30,000
to just $2,950.
HAS AMERICA DESTROYED ITSELF MERELY TO MAKE THE RICH SUPER RICH?
Viking Economics by
George Lakey
by Melville
House
This
week, we’re excited to be publishing Viking Economics, George Lakey’s look at how the
Nordic countries, in a very short span of time, managed to move past many of
the problems faced by nations like the US and UK today — problems with
inequality, infrastructural weakness, the cost of education, and personal
freedom. Today, the people of Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden enjoy widely-shared prosperity,
low crime rates, reliable infrastructure, affordable education, great personal
freedoms — some of the highest standards of living in the world.
Particularly
as both the US and the UK face some of our biggest challenges in a generation —
and, in both cases, under new leadership — Viking
Economicsoffers some crucial examples of how we might get some
things right.
Here’s a
brief excerpt to read on the longship ride over to your local bookstore to buy a copy; please try not to get herring on it.
Like most
Americans today, Norwegians a century ago didn’t like the results of a wealth
gap: the hunger and poverty, the crime, elderly friends warehoused or left in
isolation, young people without hope of a good job. Norwegians also didn’t like
the attitudes that went with inequality: an inclination toward arrogance among
higher-income people and the feeling among lower-income people that they were
losers, defeated by the system.
Early in
the twentieth century, Norway had the formal institutions of parliamentary
democracy, but ordinary people were not empowered: they did not set the
direction of their society. The direction was set, instead, by the economic
elite, through the political parties they dominated and the businesses they
ran. Career options were limited, and there was little social mobility.
The
differences between then and now are striking: If you’re a Norwegian teenager
today and the job you’re interested in pursuing doesn’t require higher
education, you can choose among good public vocational courses. If you learn
better in a hands-on apprenticeship mode, publicly supported programs help you
do that. If, instead, you prefer to develop a talent in art or music, or follow
a career at sea or in engineering, you can attend a free post-secondary school.
Paid
maternity and paternity leave (including for adoptive parents) is built into
the system, and your job is held until you return. After the leave is over,
child support is increased if you choose to be a full-time parent. If your
choice is to go back to work, affordable childcare is available.
Extensive,
subsidized public transport means that you probably won’t need a car to get to
work. High educational standards prevail in big-city schools, as well as in the
suburbs. Small towns receive subsidies to make them attractive for people who
might otherwise feel forced to live in a city for cultural amenities, again
increasing your options. The economy subsidizes family farming both for its own
sake and for food security, so farmers can earn a reasonable income, another
freedom denied in many industrialized countries.
The
government offers free vocational counseling, education, and job-training
resources for people seeking a career change, and entrepreneurialism is
encouraged through free health care and a public pension for all: In Norway,
you have the freedom to fail without becoming a failure.
Money
doesn’t dominate the political system, so citizens are freer to participate
meaningfully in political life—and they’re more likely to be exposed to
newspapers with a variety of points of view, because journalism is subsidized
to avoid a narrowing of perspective. According to Freedom House, in 2013,
Norway was tied with Sweden at number one in the world for freedom of the
press. Denmark was sixth, and Iceland was tenth. (The United States was
twenty-sixth.) Indeed, this approach to public life has a long lineage in the
region: Sweden was the first country in the world to establish freedom of the
press—in 1766.
The
Nordics are among the longest-living people in the world, and older citizens
continue to benefit from an economy designed for personal freedom. The Global
Watch Index studied ninety-six countries and rated Norway as the best place to grow old, followed closely by Sweden.
The pension system enables you to live at home with health aides or in a senior
living facility. You don’t need to fear hunger or lack of medicines or of
health care. Every small town has a music and culture center where you can
enjoy the arts and pursue your hobbies.
The crime
rate is very low, partly because societies with high equality tend to
experience less crime. Even in their largest city, Norwegians enjoy a
remarkable degree of freedom from fear about personal safety.
Designing
an economy that supports freedom and equality pays off in happiness, judging
from the Vikings’ descendants making the top ten in the UN’s International
Happiness Index. In 2015, the ratings showed Denmark, Iceland, and Norway sharing first
place with Switzerland, while Sweden was close to its cousins.
The
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), composed of
thirty-four of the most-developed nations, compared life satisfaction
experienced by the people in each country in 2013. The OECD found Norway second, Iceland third, Sweden fourth, and
Denmark fifth.
And yet
in spite of all this security and support, the Nordic yen for adventure has not
disappeared. Americans, too, have a strong yearning for both freedom and
equality, so the Nordic desire for both isn’t surprising. What is surprising,
though, is that they went ahead and built an economy to serve those values.
That’s the story in this book.
Like
their Viking ancestors, the moderns made mistakes in their explorations.
Iceland’s financial collapse of 2008 was a spectacular error, and, as I’ll
describe, back in the 1980s, the Norwegians and Swedes made a series of serious
economic mistakes. The Nordics haven’t built a utopia: Norwegians see
themselves as “a nation of complainers,” and this book doesn’t shy away from
the challenges that face them and their Nordic cousins.
Still,
it’s useful for us as outsiders to observe the Nordics’ expeditions and to use
them to reflect on our own situations. There are many important lessons to be
learned.
Part of Trump tax bill bonanza for the
wealthy
"The $100 billion figure is not so much a record as it is
another dimension in corporate plunder."
“It has been estimated that the cost of an iPhone, retailing for
around $650 to $700, is made up of $220 for the components and $5 for the labor
of assembly.”
"In the past week, at least one prominent Republican,
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, has publicly admitted that
the tax bill was sold under false pretenses."
TRUMPERNOMICS:
The Trickle Up to the Rich Economy
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/12/congress-passes-tax-windfall-for-super.html
"It will, in fact, no more provide
decent-paying jobs and improved wages than the previous tax “reforms” carried
out over the past three-and-a-half decades. The Reagan tax cuts of 1981 and
1986, Bill Clinton’s capital gains tax cut in 1997 and George W. Bush’s tax
“reform” of 2001 were all part of a ruling class offensive against the working
class, which included sweeping attacks on wages, jobs, pensions, education,
health care, housing and other social benefits."
Apple hands out $102 billion to shareholders
By Patrick Martin
3 May 2018
Apple, Inc. announced Tuesday that it
would convert much of its overseas profits, held in a huge cash hoard for
several years, into a $102 billion windfall for corporate executives and other
shareholders. The financial bonanza for a single company is comparable to the
GDP of Ecuador or Sri Lanka.
The maker of the iPhone, the Mac personal
computer and other consumer electronics is raising its quarterly dividend by 16
percent, from 63 cents a share to 73 cents a share, a move that will provide $2
billion in increased income directly to owners of the company’s stock. Apple
will become the largest payer of dividends in corporate America, surpassing
ExxonMobil.
As princely as this payout is, it is
dwarfed by the $100 billion buyback of Apple stock, to be carried out over the
course of the year. Its effect will be to boost the company’s share price
indirectly. Moreover, by reducing the number of Apple shares in circulation, it
will dramatically increase such financial indicators as earnings per share, the
principal measure by which Wall Street judges a company and which corporate
boards use to set executive pay levels.
The $100 billion figure is not so much a
record as it is another dimension in corporate plunder. With that sum, Apple could have bought
every share of stock in UPS, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs or Boeing. It is
greater than the market value of 460 of the Fortune 500 largest US companies.
The funneling of $102 billion from Apple
to its shareholders is a distribution of wealth within the ruling elite. The
top five individual shareholders are all Apple executives, including CEO Tim
Cook. The top three institutional shareholders, holding nearly 18 percent of
the stock, are Vanguard, Black Rock and State Street, three giant investment
funds. These and others like them will reap the bulk of the financial plunder
from the dividend payout and buyback.
The bonanza for the super-rich is the
product of two interrelated processes. First is the sweatshop labor of millions
of workers in Asia, mainly China, who manufacture components and assemble the
iPhones, laptops and watches Apple sells. Second is the tax cut pushed through
last December by the Trump administration and the Republican Congress, with
only token opposition from the Democrats.
Apple reaps superprofits from the labor
of cruelly exploited workers in Asia, most of them employed through
subcontractors, as well as through monopoly rents generated by its control of
intellectual property rights to the underlying technology.
As written , “It has been estimated that the cost of an iPhone,
retailing for around $650 to $700, is made up of $220 for the components and $5
for the labor of assembly.”
This accounts for the cash hoard
accumulated abroad, and deliberately held there in a tax avoidance scheme,
while the company’s paid lobbyists obtained the support of both Democratic and
Republican lawmakers to back a “one-time” cut in the tax rate to induce
American companies to return these funds to the United States.
Such a measure was initially proposed by
Obama and backed by congressional Democrats, but it was not finally adopted
until it could be incorporated into the broader tax cut for corporations and
the wealthy proposed by Trump and congressional Republicans.
The resulting tax cut legislation slashed
the basic corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, the largest single
business tax cut in US history. Apple was already paying an effective rate of
only 26 percent on its current US earnings, because of various financial
manipulations and tax breaks.
By far the biggest benefit for Apple came
from the provision allowing global companies to bring home profits held
overseas and pay a one-time low rate of only 15.5 percent, less than half the
statutory rate of 35 percent. Apple had the largest single stockpile of such
profits, a staggering $257 billion, accumulated in part from global sales and
in part from bookkeeping transactions that artificially diverted profits to
overseas accounts to escape US taxation, pending the passage of such a bill.
As part of the repatriation of this cash
hoard, the company will pay $38 billion in taxes to the Treasury—an amount that
will no doubt be hailed as the largest single corporate tax payment in
history—but this represents a saving of $47 billion over what Apple would
actually have paid if US tax laws had been enforced instead of being treated as
a dead letter by giant corporations.
Trump’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 would
have been better named the “Amnesty for Corporate Tax Cheats Act,” or perhaps
the “An Act to Give Apple $47 Billion While Starving Schools and the Poor.”
In a democratically organized and
rationally planned society, much better use would have been found for the $102
billion being used to enrich those already wealthy. As the chart suggests,
Apple’s $102 billion windfall could have paid for the entire budget of the
federal Department of Education, or paid the full tuition cost for every US
college student, with $20 billion left over. It is double what all US public
schools spend on capital improvements (buildings, playgrounds, school buses,
equipment) and nearly twice as much money as the federal government spends on
food stamps for more than 40 million low-income families. It is more than three
times what the United Nations estimates is needed to feed every hungry family
in the world for the next year.
When the tax cut bill was passed last
December, the White House began hyping a series of announcements by major
companies of plans to raise wages, hire more workers, or invest in new
facilities, in order to provide “evidence” for its phony claims that the
legislation was aimed at benefiting American workers.
Apple, for example, has pledged to hire
another 20,000 workers over the next five years, at a cost of $5 billion
($50,000 a year per worker, counting wages and benefits, below the median wage
in the United States). Even if this $5 billion materializes, it would represent
only 2 percent of Apple’s total repatriated funds. It is dwarfed by the $102
billion handout to shareholders.
In the past week, at least one prominent
Republican, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, has publicly admitted that the tax
bill was sold under false pretenses. In an interview with British magazine The Economist , Rubio said, “There is still
a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re
going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers … In
fact, they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence
whatsoever that money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”
Surveys by business groups have confirmed
that the lion’s share of the tax cut gains will go the stock buybacks and
dividends, while wage gains are estimated at 15 percent (which includes, of
course, bonuses and salary increases for executives, as opposed to options and
other stock-related compensation) to as low as 6 percent of the total.
Wall Street analysts now estimate that
stock buybacks and dividend increases will top $1 trillion in 2018, nearly
doubling the previous record set in 2007, the year before the financial crash.
In the first quarter alone, stock buybacks and cash takeovers topped $305
billion, before Tuesday’s $102 billion declaration by Apple.
As for working people, nearly half own no
stock at all, and the rest have minimal amounts in 401(k) retirement accounts
and pensions. The bottom 80 percent of the population—the entire working class
and sections of the middle class—own just 8 percent of stocks. The richest 10
percent of Americans own 80 percent of all shares.
OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a 11
TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any
president in US history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2
Trillion.
OXFAM reported that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the
wealth created went to the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN WORKER…. Amazon’s JEFF BEZOS PLAN FOR A NEW AMERICAN SLAVERY
"Amazon is a massive wrecking
machine consuming American retail. It's looting the economy and leaving behind
rubble. " --- DANIEL
REENFIELD FRONTPAGE MAG
REENFIELD FRONTPAGE MAG
AS WALL STREET PLUNDERS: A Nation of One Million Homeless and Overrun
By Mexico’s Export of “cheap labor”!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/04/wall-street-plunders-ceo-pay-banksters.html
“But a series of reports on CEO pay, bank profits and corporate cash
released over the past week reveal that corporate America and the financial
oligarchy are wallowing in record levels of wealth.”
Report: Amazon Importing More Foreign Workers to Take Coveted
Tech Industry Jobs than Facebook, Google Combined
HINDUSTAN
TIMES/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Amazon, the multinational online retail conglomerate, is importing more
foreign workers to the United States to take coveted tech industry jobs than
Facebook and Google combined.
Every year,
more than 100,000 foreign workers are brought to the U.S. on the H-1B visa and
are allowed to stay for up to six years. There are about 650,000 H-1B
visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any
given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train
their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News.
Data reported
by Statista reveals that Amazon
requested to import 2,515 foreign H-1B workers in 2017, more than the 720
foreign workers that Facebook asked for and the 1,213 foreign workers Google
has attempted to bring to the U.S.
In 2017,
Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Apple all requested more
foreign workers to take U.S. jobs than the year before. In 2016, Amazon was one
of the top 20 corporations demanding
foreign workers to take jobs.
As Breitbart News reported, tech
conglomerates like Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple hide their H-1B foreign worker
hires through outsourcing firms like Cognizant, Tata, and Infosys. The practice
allows the corporations to claim they are not undercutting or replacing
American workers at extraordinary rates, as they simply contract the foreign
workers through the outsourcing firms.
Meanwhile,
the H-1B visa program and importation of foreign workers has crowded out
American young people and STEM graduates from high-paying jobs in Silicon
Valley, the tech hub of the world, Breitbart News reported.
Data: Foreign-Born Workers Overwhelmingly Outnumber
Americans in Silicon Valley Jobs http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/01/18/data-foreign-born-workers-overwhelmingly-outnumber-americans-in-silicon-valley-jobs/ …
Data: Foreign-Born Workers Overwhelmingly Outnumber
Americans in Silicon Valley Jobs | Breitbart
Data analyzed by the Seattle Times revealed that
71 percent of tech workers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born, while the tech
industry in the San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward area is made up of 50
percent foreign-born tech workers.
Though not
specified in the analysis, a wide number of the tech industry’s foreign tech
workers are imported to the United States through the H-1B visa, which brings
more than 100,000 foreign workers to the U.S. every year.
Oftentimes,
importing a foreign worker on the H-1B visa is the first step in a
multinational corporations’ effort to outsource the American job, as the foreign
worker arrives in the U.S., is trained in the job, and then is eventually sent
back overseas with the job.
The growing
foreign-born population dominating the workforce in Silicon Valley comes
as nearly 500,000 Americans graduate in the STEM fields every year. Those
American graduates are forced to compete with a booming foreign-born population
in the U.S. and foreign workers who are imported by outsourcing firms and major
tech conglomerates.
The
foreign-born population in Silicon Valley is likely heavily weighted and biased
to male Indian nationals, as they make up nearly 70 percent of all imported
foreign workers on the H-1B visa, as cited by the Center for
Immigration Studies.
JEFF BEZOS, BILL GATES AND WARREN BUFFET and SWAMP KEEPER TWITTER
TRUMPER….
(JEFF BEZOS)
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION II WILL IS PAVED BY THE LOOTING BILLIONAIRE
CLASS AND WILL TRAMPLE THE POLS THAT GROVEL AT THEIR FEET FOR BRIBES!
"Today,
each of the top 5 billionaires owns as much as 750 million people, more
than the
total population of Latin America and double the population of the US."
"Amazon is a massive wrecking machine consuming American
retail. It's looting the economy and leaving behind rubble. " --- DANIEL
GREENFIELD
FRONTPAGE MAG
TRUMP’S SECRET AMNESTY, WIDER OPEN BORDERS DOCTRINE TO KEEP WAGES
DEPRESSED.
"During the same month that Schlafly had
backed Trump for his “America First”
agenda, Nielsen’s committee
released an ideologically-globalist report, promoting
the European migrant crisis as a win for
big business who would profit greatly
from a never-ending stream of cheap, foreign
migrants."
Amazon Pampers 6,000 Dogs While Warehouse Workers Pee in
Bottles
Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images
In an unfortunate coincidence for Amazon, on
the same day a puffy public relations piece about the retail giant’s pampering of
6,000 dogs made the rounds through our
compliant media, so dida report about
warehouse employees being forced to urinate into bottles in order to keep up
with their respective work quotas without sanction.
At the retail giant’s 8.1 million square foot Seattle
headquarters, life is not only good for Amazon’s employees, but 6,000 of their
pets, who are not only allowed to spend the day with their owners at work, but
enjoy all kinds of perks, including treats at every reception desk, a doggie
deck where they can run around, and even a leash-free park.
While no one with a heart could begrudge the pampering of any
animal, especially man’s best friend, the comparison to how poorly Amazon
CEO Jeff Bezos (who also owns the far-left Washington Post) reportedly
treats a countless number of his employees, could not be more striking.
“The target grows every year. I do not have two more legs yet to
make the 100% to pick, where you actually need to run and go to the toilet just
during the break,” one Amazon warehouse worker who works in the UK, reported.
Others claimed that they avoid “drinking water throughout their work shift for
fear of having to use the toilet.”
For those of us who worked on the top floor, the closest toilets
were down four flights of stairs,” claimed James Bloodworth, an
undercover investigator. “People just peed in bottles because they lived in
fear of being disciplined over ‘idle time’ and losing their jobs just because
they needed the loo.”
Other reports have found that, unlike
those Seattle-based dogs and their 17th floor bathroom amenities, one
fulfillment center (read warehouse) in the UK offered its working class
employees “disgusting and ill-maintained toilets are over a quarter mile
away within the vast complex.” At this same complex, an investigative reporter
found “staff asleep on their feet, exhausted,” adding that “those who
could not keep up with the punishing targets faced the sack – and some who
buckled under the strain had to be attended to by ambulance crews.”
According to these reports, Bezos appears to have created a
disturbing caste system within his empire. The white collar employees and their
pets are treated like royalty, while the working class are treated like paid
slaves.
Bezos’ Washington Post, the left-wing news outlet President
Trump has accused of acting as an Amazon lobbying firm, has already
published 39 stories about Amazon this month,
many of them in defense of Amazon, but not a word about Monday’s undercover
report about working conditions being so bad, warehouse workers are peeing in
bottles.
With $1 billion fine, Wells Fargo's tough
year gets even worse
| April 13, 2018 10:43 AM
·
The
initial $185 million settlement cost Wells Fargo lucrative bond deals with
government agencies, led to contentious congressional hearings and spurred the
abrupt retirement of then-Chairman and CEO John Stumpf.
Associated Press
The amount may change as the San Francisco-based lender
continues talks with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the
Comptroller of the Currency's Office, potentially altering the preliminary
first-quarter profit growth reported on Friday. Wells Fargo's brand has been
tarnished since it conceded in late 2016 that 5,000 workers had been fired over
a five-year period for creating more than 3 million unauthorized customer
accounts in order to meet ambitious sales targets.
The initial $185 million settlement cost the bank
lucrative bond deals with government agencies, led to contentious congressional
hearings and spurred the abrupt retirement of then-Chairman and CEO John
Stumpf. Under his successor, Tim Sloan, the bank conceded it was also facing
reviews of prior mortgage practices as well as the sale of unneeded insurance
policies to auto-loan applicants who were told they might not qualify
otherwise.
The latest settlement talks show Wells Fargo "still
has wood to chop regarding the consumer-related issues the company faces,"
Brian Kleinhanzl of brokerage Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said in a note to
clients.
Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve imposed a cap on
Wells Fargo's growth until it improves corporate oversight, a move that Sloan
has said will curb the lender's profit by as much as $400 million. The directive requires
the San Francisco-based lender to keep its assets at or below the roughly $2
trillion held at the end of December 2017. At that time, it was the nation's
third-largest bank, behind New York-based JPMorgan Chase and Charlotte,
N.C.-based Bank of America.
The cap isn't hurting Wells Fargo's ability to expand
lending in areas where it seeks growth since it can compensate by selling
assets in other sectors, Sloan has said, a point he reiterated on an earnings
call Friday.
"Our folks are out there facing off with our
customers every day across the entire platform," the CEO told analysts. At
the same time, the lender is committed to resolving regulatory concerns and is
reviewing all its businesses to ensure they meet compliance standards.
"We've certainly had a thorough look in every nook
and cranny in the company, and we're continuing to," Sloan said. "One
of the lessons learned for us, candidly, over the last few years is that we
should have been doing a better job of that when we were performing quite well
in the prior years, and we're not going to make that mistake again."
Wells Fargo shares fell 3.1 percent to $51.05 in New York
trading on Friday. Based on the lender's preliminary figures, net income
climbed 5.4 percent to $5.9 billion, or $1.12 a share, in the three months
through March.
Updated 4/13/18, 12:07 PM: Updated with analyst comment
in fourth paragraph.
THE
PLUNDERING BARONESS PELOSI:
Nancy
Pelosi triples her loot since the banksters nearly destroyed America’s economy
and demands endless hordes of illegals to keep wages depressed!
MAKES
YOU WONDER HOW MANY ILLEGALS SHE EMPLOYS AT HER ST. HELENA, NAPA WINERY …. The
same county where an ILLEGAL started a fire that killed dozens and did millions
of dollars in property damage!
OBAMA’S
CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a 11 TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re
still plundering us!
Barack Obama created more debt for
the middle class than any president in US
history, and also had the only huge
QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
OXFAM reported
that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the wealth created went to the
top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
April
5, 2018
Democrats: The
Party of the Super-Duper (Mostly White) Gazillionaires
Though there are numerous questions I
could ask to determine if a fellow American gets his "news" from the
DMIC (Democrat Media Industrial Complex), I usually lead with this one:
"What political party is the party of the wealthy?"
If the answer is "the Republican
Party," I know that the individual is a regular consumer of DMIC
propaganda. It's tempting to get angered at the individual, but I
know that two of the ways the DMIC lies are by distorting and withholding.
The Democratic Party is the party of the
mega-, mega-wealthy. This is one of the dangerous cover-ups of the
DMIC. Let's go to the tale of the tape.
BLOG: BELOW IS A WHO'S-WHO OF BILLIONAIRES FOR OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY, NO E-VERIFY AND NO LEGAL NEED APPLY TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED!
1.
Bill
Gates, $86 billion
2.
Warren
Buffet, $75.6
3.
Jeff
Bezos, $72.8
4.
Mark
Zuckerberg, $56.0
5.
Larry
Ellison, $52.2
6.
Charles
Koch, $48.3
7.
David
Koch, $48.3
8.
Michael
Bloomberg, $47.5
9.
Larry
Page, $40.7
10.
Sergey
Brin, $39.8
Well, well, well – look at all that wealth
that could be redistributed! The above wealth totals $567
billion. The Ds above outnumber the Rs 7-3 (I counted the Kochs
twice, even though they could be counted as one; the third is Ellison), with
74% of the wealth owned by the Democrats.
Oh, the hypocrisy, the
hypocrisy! Perhaps you're asking yourself: What's my fair share of all those billions?
Democrats spread their wealth to other
Democrats
Make no mistake: in addition to campaign
contributions, which can be viewed at OpenSecrets.org (I have no affiliation),
the Democrat billionaires do believe in wealth redistribution, which is why
they've invested their monies across every Democrat-friendly industry – from
media to technology to anti-Second Amendment groups. It's the
Democrats' (legal) version of a Madoff scheme.
In 2016, the Kochs – favorite targets of
Democrats – spent over $31 million ($11 million to candidates and political
action committees and $20 million on lobbying). These big bucks
certainly are not chump change, but they're ranked 39 among all donors to
candidates and PACs and 27 among all lobbyist spending.
Whatever one's opinion of money in
politics, in all its forms – soft, hard, dark, by individual, by family – it's
indisputable that it is a wide and deep hole that both major parties have
leveraged.
But why stop at the Democrat gazillionaires? Let's
take a look at other Democrat 1-Percenters.
I checked dollar amounts at the Federal
Election Commission, where campaign contributions are tabulated (keep in mind
that there is usually a lag in tabulations – sometimes up to a year due to
off-year election years). Here's a 2014 graph; there's some crossover, but the D contributions outnumber R by
almost half a billion dollars, and this is over the last 25 years.
For 2016 federal contributions to organizations,
seven of the top 10 (including number 1) went to Democrats, totaling over $300
million.
For 2016 federal contributions to
individuals, six of the top 10 (including number 1) went to Democrats, totaling
nearly $250 million.
In the 2016 Presidential election,
President Trump spent $325 million; Clinton spent $563 million.
The Democrat myth of publicly financed
elections
Does one really think Democrats want
campaign finance reform, or publicly financed elections, or higher taxes for
the wealthy? The Democrats' counter is always well, those are the rules of the game, and
we're playing the game. Money in politics is a
legitimately concerning issue, but Democrats need to spare us the sanctimonious moralizing that
they give mucho dinero out of the sheer kindness of their hearts.
Democrats love money in politics as much
as Republicans, and they keep their sheep voters occupied with hating the 2010
U.S. Supreme Court ruling inCitizens United v. FEC,
which had nothing to do with campaign contributions; it had to do with the
constitutionality of airing on television a Citizens United-produced
documentary about Hillary Clinton before the 2008 Democratic Party primary.
Marxist warfare
Money in politics is more ammo in the
Democrats' Marxist war of economic hate and envy. President Trump's
election, in large part, stemmed from small business owners and
dirty-fingernails workers who have grown tired of the condescending "you
didn't build that" remarks made famous by President Obama and U.S. senator
Elizabeth Warren. The super-rich do well no matter who's president,
and they did extraordinarily well under Obama. (Obama's net worth,
it should be noted, is approximately $8 million; his net worth was around $1.7
million when first elected president, and his 2015 tax return showed an
effective tax rate of around 19% – lower than Warren Buffett's
secretary's!). It's estimated that 90% of income gains went to the
top 1% under Obama, who spent a cool $1.9 billion in his 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
Let's give "honorable mention"
to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who is the fourth wealthiest billionaire in
the world and a majority stakeholder in The New York Times
Company. Over the years, Slim, both personally and through his company,
Telmex, has contributed millions to the Clinton Foundation. All this
means that Mr. Slim, a Mexican citizen, has heavily involved himself in
American politics. Sounds an awful lot like collusion, doesn't it?
The DMIC (of which Mr. Slim is a member)
has carefully, and effectively, crafted a narrative that the GOP is the party
of wealthy whites. As usual with anything Democrat, the opposite is
true: wealthy whites predominantly vote for and fund Democrats, and the
top ten most expensive cities in America are populated by mostly white, limousine
liberal Democrats.
But your Democrat friends and relatives
knew all this from Bill Gates, Rachel Maddow, and Media Matters for America,
right?
Rich Logis is the host of The Rich
Logis Show, at TheRichLogisShow.com, and author of the upcoming book 10 Warning Signs Your Child is Becoming a
Democrat. He can be found on Twitter at
@RichLogis.
NANCY PELOSI, and her LA RAZA SISTERS,
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, FORMER SEN. BARBARA BOXER and NOW SEN. KAMALA HARRIS are
a pantheon of staggering self-serving corruption.
They and their families have all gotten
filthy rich off of these women’s elected office.
Their endless hispandering for the
illegals’ votes has turned California into Mexifornia, a drug, gang and anchor
baby welfare third-world dumpster!
“Liberal
governing has transformed beautiful California into the poverty
capital of America with the worst quality of
life. Crazy taxes,
crazy high cost of
living, and crazy overreaching
regulations have crushed the middle class, forcing the middle class to
exit the Sunshine State. All that is left in California are illegals
feeding at the breast of the state, rapidly growing massive homeless tent cities,
and the mega-rich.” LLOYD MARCUS
Democrats
Reject Trump’s Amnesty Framework, Seek Alliance With GOP’s Business Wing… OTHER
PARTNERS INCLUDE MEXICO, U.S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE, ALL BILLIONAIRES WHO HIRE
FOREIGNERS ONLY!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/02/neil-munro-working-hard-to-keep-wages.html
AMNESTY
IS ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED.
IT
REQUIRES ENDLESS HORDES OF HEAVY BREEDING MEXICANS JUMPING OUR BORDERS FOR
WELFARE, NO ENFORCEMENT AND NO LEGAL NEED APPLY!
ASSAULT ON THE
AMERICAN WORKER…. Amazon’s JEFF BEZOS PLAN FOR A NEW AMERICAN SLAVERY
"Amazon
is a massive wrecking machine consuming American retail. It's looting the
economy and leaving behind rubble. " --- DANIEL GREENFIELD FRONTPAGE MAG
Billionaire
Mexicans tell their poor to JUMP U.S. OPEN BORDERS and LOOT THE STUPID GRINGO…
and loot they do!
Billions
of dollars are sucked out of America from Mexico’s looting!
1) Mexico ended legal immigration 100
years ago, except for Spanish blood.
2) Mexico is the 17th richest nation but
pays the 220th lowest minimum wage to force their subjects to invade the USA.
The expands territory for Mexicans, spreads the Spanish language, and culture
and genotypes, while earning 17% of Mexico's gross GDP as Foreign Remittance
Income.
AS WALL STREET PLUNDERS: A Nation of One
Million Homeless and Overrun By Mexico’s Export of “cheap labor”!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/04/wall-street-plunders-ceo-pay-banksters.html
“But a series of reports on CEO pay, bank
profits and corporate cash released over the past week reveal that corporate
America and the financial oligarchy are wallowing in record levels of wealth.”
MASSIVE TRANSFER OF WEALTH TO THE RICH: YOUR DEMOCRAT PARTY AT
WORK…. for Wall Street, Banksters, Billionaires and LA RAZA.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-democrat-party-for-billionaires.html
“But a series of reports on CEO pay, bank
profits and corporate cash released over the past week reveal that corporate
America and the financial oligarchy are wallowing in record levels of wealth.”
Report details massive
growth of inequality worldwide
By Eric London
10 April 2018
In December, researchers Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel
Zucman released the groundbreaking 300-page World Inequality Report 2018 detailing the growth
of social inequality on a world scale over recent decades. The authors “provide
the first estimates of how the growth in global income since 1980 has been
distributed across the totality of the world population.”
The growth of
within-country inequality
The report shows that
inequality is worsening in nearly every country and is therefore increasing on
a world scale. As a result, the report warns: “Where rising inequality is not
properly addressed, it leads to all manner of political and social
catastrophes”—i.e., revolution.
The current share of
total wealth controlled by the top 1 percent is 33 percent, up from 28 percent
in 1980—a shift that reflects the transfer of trillions from the working class
to the rich. The top 10 percent of the world now owns over 70 percent of total
wealth. The bottom half of the world’s population—3.5 billion people—owns less
than 2 percent of the wealth.
In terms of income,
the top 1 percent captured 23 percent of world income from 1980 to 2016—equal
to the total captured by the bottom 60 percent. The top 0.1 percent captured as
much income as the bottom half of the world’s population.
After decreasing for
most of the twentieth century, the income and wealth share of the top 10 and
top 1 percent has increased dramatically since the 1980s:
If the world’s
billionaires continue increasing their wealth at the present rate, they will
eventually “own 100 percent of the world’s wealth.”
Growth of the
international working class and homogenization of incomes across continents
Alongside the growth
of inequality, the income levels for the poorest half of the world have
increased substantially. This shows that billions of people have entered the
working class in recent decades, leaving behind a rural existence as
globalization has rapidly transformed social relations in the former colonial
countries.
The greatest
transformation has taken place in China, where the population took just 3
percent of global income in 1980, but now takes 19 percent—surpassing both
North America (17 percent) and Europe (17 percent). Income distribution by
region is much more even than in past decades, with India increasing its share
of world income to 7 percent, Japan declining to 4 percent, and the rest of
Asia increasing to 18 percent. Africa and Latin America take only 5 and 8
percent of world income, respectively.
The industrialization
of the former colonial countries (especially across Asia) coincides with a
decline of income among the 60th to 90th percentiles, a group mostly comprised
of the working class in the United States and Europe. Incomes between the 60th
and 90th percentiles were stagnant, increasing less than 50 percent over a
36-year period. The conditions and incomes of workers across the world are
becoming increasingly homogenized.
For example, from
1950 to 2016, the average income of a resident of Asia was 34 percent of the
world average. By 2016, the average resident of Asia made 79 percent of the
world average. For China alone, the figure increased from 15 percent in 1950 to
89 percent in 2016.
The same figure
declined in Africa, where the average resident’s income was 64 percent of the
world average in 1950 but just 41 percent in 2016. In Latin America, the figure
also declined from 140 percent to 91 percent. The average income of a resident
of Europe or the United States has declined substantially and is much closer to
the world average than in previous decades.
This shows that as
the working class grows numerically and becomes increasingly interconnected in
the world process of production, the conditions and incomes of workers across
the world become increasingly homogenized.
Impact of the
Russian Revolution and dissolution of the Soviet Union on world inequality
The growth of
inequality and divergent rates of income growth are the product not simply of
abstract objective processes. They are the outcome of the development of the
class struggle over the last century.
The report notes that
the Russian Revolution of 1917 dramatically reduced social inequality on a
world scale.
The revolution shook
the world. The report notes, “In emerging economies, political and social
shocks led to an even more radical reduction of income inequality. The
abolition of private property in Russia, land redistribution, massive
investments in public education, and strict government control over the economy
via five-year plans effectively spread the benefits of growth from the early
1920s to the 1970s.” Further, “For most of the global population, the first
three-quarters of the twentieth century corresponded to a very strong compression
in the distribution of national incomes.”
In India, for
example, “the top percentile income share decreased from around 20 percent at
the end of the colonial period to 6 percent in the early 1980s, after four
decades of socialist-inspired policies aimed at reducing the economic power of
the elite, including nationalizations, government control over prices, and
extreme tax rates on top incomes.” In China, inequality was drastically reduced
as a result of the expropriations and nationalizations that followed the 1949
Chinese Revolution.
But the dissolution
of the Soviet Union by the imperialist powers and the Stalinist bureaucracy
“contributed to strong increases in top percentile income shares” across the
world. In Russia, the top 1 percent now controls 20 percent of income—equal to
the distribution under the Tsar. In India, the top 1 percent controls 22
percent of income, worse than under English colonial rule.
In China, the
pro-market reforms implemented by the Stalinist bureaucracy beginning in the
late 1970s produced a more drawn-out growth in inequality. While the bottom 50
and top 10 percent took equal shares of national income in 1978, the top 10
percent now takes nearly three times that of the bottom 50 percent.
In Russia itself, the
reintroduction of private property “resulted in massive redistribution and
impoverishment for millions of Russian households, particularly among the
retired populations. The share of national income accruing to the bottom 50
percent collapsed, dropping from about 30 percent of total income in 1990-1991
to less than 10 percent in 1996.”
Since the dissolution
of the Soviet Union, inequality has risen to levels almost approaching the
extreme inequality of the United States.
The rise of
oligarchy in the US
In no country in the
world does the ruling class possess as much wealth as in the United States, the
center of world imperialism.
Europe’s top 1
percent increased its income share from 10 percent in 1980 to 12 percent in
2016. In the US, however, the top 1 percent increased from the same figure—10
percent in 1980—to 20 percent today.
The wealth share of
the top 10 percent has increased from 63 percent in 1985 to 77 percent today.
But even this masks the massive accumulation of wealth at the very top. The
wealth share of the “next 9 percent” has declined relative to that of the top 1
percent.
High levels of
inequality dominate even within the top 1 percent: “The rise in wealth share of
the top 1 percent itself owes almost all of its increase to the growth of the
top 0.1 percent share, which rose from 7 percent to 22 percent” from 1986 to
2012. The top 0.1 percent now owns as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.
“The average real wealth of the bottom 90 percent of families was no higher in
2012 than in 1986.”
The wealth and income
of the “next 9 percent” below the top 1 percent has increased dramatically in
absolute terms, from an average income of $586,060 in 1980 to $1.14 million in
2014, while the bottom 90 percent has seen its wealth stagnate or decline.
The inability of
governments to respond to social grievances or economic crises
The report also
charts the growth of private capital and the decline of public capital over the
decades. The process of privatization has taken place across almost all
countries and shows the domination of private transnational corporations over
the world’s economic activity.
The report notes:
“The domination of private wealth in national wealth represents a marked change
from the situation which prevailed in the 1970s, when net public wealth was typically
between 50 percent and 100 percent of national income in most developed
countries (and over 100 percent in Germany).”
Private wealth to
national income ratios are “returning to the high values observed in the late
19th century”—i.e., the gilded age of unregulated capitalist exploitation. The
report’s authors conclude, “Today, with either small or negative net public
wealth, the governments of developed countries are arguably limited in their
ability to intervene in the economy, redistribute income, and mitigate rising
inequality.”
This finding
contradicts the study’s policy recommendations, which appeal to the governments
to pare back austerity measures and increase spending on social programs. By
the authors’ own admission, the governments have transferred so much of the
state resources to the balance sheets of the billionaires and millionaires that
they lack the resources to carry out the massive expenditures required to
respond to future economic crises or improve the lives of billions of workers and
poor people worldwide.
Conclusions
The report shows the
objective basis for revolutionary optimism. The size of the working class has
grown massively, especially in Asia. Globalization has brought the working
class together into the same process of production, leading to a leveling in
its conditions. Increasingly connected by social media and the Internet, there
is every indication that the class struggle will be increasingly international
not only in its content, but also in its form. For this reason, the capitalist
governments of the world are seeking to censor the Internet and prevent workers
from using social media as a platform for political organization.
The report is also
proof of the necessity of social revolution. The governments are so dominated by
the oligarchs in their respective countries that they are economically unable
to respond to economic crisis or the needs of the working class. Only social
revolution—with nationalizations, expropriation of the wealth of the world
aristocracy, and the redistribution of the wealth to meet the needs of the
human race—is capable of wiping inequality and poverty off the face of the
earth.
Washington
Times: ‘Secret Empires’ Revelations ‘Shocking, Startling, Stunning–and
Sickening’
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/04/10/washington-times-secret-empires-revelations-shocking-startling-stunning-sickening/
HarperCollins
The
Washington Times’ Fred J. Eckert reviews the new
book Secret Empires: How the American Political Class
Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends by Government Accountability Institute President and Breitbart
Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer.
The
astonishing widespread massive corruption of some of the biggest names in
American politics that Peter Schweizer reveals in his new blockbuster expose is shocking,
startling, stunning — and sickening.
“Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides
Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends” is an insightful and
extraordinarily consequential book that should ignite a national uproar.
Don’t hold your breath. Our national media can be expected to do
all in its power to suppress the possibility of any uproar — even when the
corruption is this vast. It’s what they’re best at — covering up their own
malfeasance and protecting politicians with whose ideology they’ve allied
themselves.
One of the biggest scandals in American history was swirling
around us. Leading U.S. government figures were embracing corruption. Foreign
governments were colluding with American sleazes to hurt our country. Family
and friends of these key political figures conspired as middlemen between
foreign interests seeking influence and these enormously influential U.S.
government officials.
World's richest one per
cent are on track to own two thirds of global wealth by the year 2030
·
If financial trends continue as they are the top 1% will
own 64% of global wealth
·
Shocking figures show world's riches will amount to
£216.5trillion by year 2030
·
Experts claim disparity is the result of extra savings
being made by the wealthy
PUBLISHED: 16:42 EDT, 7 April 2018 | UPDATED: 16:52 EDT, 7 April
2018
s
The world's richest
one per cent are on track to own two thirds of global wealth by 2030.
New figures from
the House of Commons library show shocking levels of income inequality if
financial trends continue in the way they have done since the 2008 crash.
Statistics reveal
the top one per cent will account for 64 per cent of global wealth, which will
total £216.5trillion in 12 years time - £99trillion higher than it is today.
They also show the
richest one per cent has been growing much faster than it has previously, at an
average of six per cent a year.
+2
·
New
figures from the House of Commons library show the world's richest one per cent
are on track to own two thirds of global wealth by 2030
Experts believe
increasing disparity will come as a result of higher saving rates among the
wealthy and the accumulation of stocks and other assets, which bring
disproportionate benefits, reports The
Guardian.
A survey carried
out by consultants Opinium shows UK voters are increasingly concerned by how
much power the world's richest have.
It showed 34 per
cent of those surveyed believe the super rich will yield the most power in 12
years time, while 28 per cent thought it would be national governments.
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The poll also
revealed fears disparity will lead to increasing corruption, as the top one per
cent take over politicians as the most influential on the global stage.
It was commissioned
by former Labour cabinet minister Liam Byrne, as MPs, academics, business
leaders and trade unions club together to take on growing inequality.
Mr Byrne wants to
put pressure on G20 leaders after declaring global inequality is 'at tipping
point'.
Actor Michael Sheen
is also backing the calls, after taking a step back from his Hollywood career
to campaign against credit providers.
+2
·
Statistics reveal the top one per cent will account for 64 per cent of
global wealth, which will total £216.5trillion in 12 years time - £99trillion
higher than it is today
WHO, BUT
FEINSTEIN and HILLARY WORK HARDER FOR CRIMINAL BANKSTERS AND THE LA RAZA HORDES
THAN THIS CORRUPT BITCH???
THE PLUNDERING BARONESS PELOSI:
Nancy Pelosi triples her loot since the
banksters nearly destroyed America’s economy and demands endless hordes of
illegals to keep wages depressed!
Pelosi: ‘Wealthiest
1% Continue to Hoard the Benefits of the U.S. Economy’
House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi (Screen Capture)
(CNSNews.com) - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.)
said today that the jobs report for March, which showed unemployment holding at
4.1 percent, indicates that “the wealthiest 1 percent continue to hoard the
benefits of the U.S. economy.”
BLOG: SUCH A FUCKING LIE!!!
DEMS ARE THE PARTY FOR OPEN BORDERS, LA RAZA SUPREMACY, NO
E-VERIFY AND NO LEGAL NEED APPLY!
"Democrats will never stop fighting for the hard-working
middle class families who are the backbone of our nation," Pelosi said.
Here is Pelosi’s
statement following the release of
the March jobs report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
“March’s disappointing jobs report shows that corporations and
the wealthiest 1 percent continue to hoard the benefits of the U.S. economy.
Powerful special interests are reaping massive windfalls from the GOP tax scam,
while workers are denied the raises and good-paying jobs they deserve.
“From the start, the White House and Republicans in Congress
have put themselves and their rich donors first, and the American people last.
Corporations are cheering their huge new tax breaks by enriching their
executives and investors, while hard-working men and women see little help and
rising health costs.
“Democrats are fighting to give the American people a better
deal, with better jobs, better wages and a better future. We are committed to
creating millions of new good-paying jobs and raising wages, lowering the
soaring cost of living for families and giving every American the tools to
succeed in the 21st Century economy. Democrats will never stop fighting for the
hard-working middle class families who are the backbone of our nation.”
NANCY PELOSI, and her LA RAZA SISTERS, SEN. DIANNE
FEINSTEIN, FORMER SEN. BARBARA BOXER and NOW SEN. KAMALA HARRIS are a pantheon
of staggering self-serving corruption.
They and their families have all gotten filthy rich
off of these women’s elected office.
Their endless hispandering for the illegals’ votes has
turned California into Mexifornia, a drug, gang and anchor baby welfare
third-world dumpster!
“Liberal governing has transformed beautiful California into
the poverty capital of
America with the worst quality of
life. Crazy taxes, crazy high
cost of living, and crazy overreaching regulations have crushed the middle class, forcing the middle class to
exit the Sunshine State. All that is left in California are illegals
feeding at the breast of the state, rapidly growing massive homeless tent cities, and the mega-rich.” LLOYD MARCUS
Pelosi -
Illegals - Sunkist - Her investments!
ANYONE KNOW
IF THE OL’ BARONESS AND CLOSET REPUBLICAN USES ILLEGALS AT THER ST. HELENA,
NAPA WINERY? SHE’S LOTHE TO PAY LEGALS A LIVING WAGES. BUT THEN THE
CATASTROPHIC NAPA FIRE WAS CAUSED BY ONE OF HER ILLEGALS, SO PERHAPS HER PLACE
BURNED DOWN!
Pelosi's
corrupt insider passing of bills that make her rich.
________________________________________
Check for
yourself
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/did_nancy_pelosi_get_wage_breaks_and.html
Speaker of
the House Nancy Pelosi's home House District includes San Francisco.
Star-Kist
Tuna's headquarters are in San Francisco, Pelosi's home district.
Star-Kist
is owned by Del Monte Foods and is a major contributor to Pelosi.
Star-Kist
is the major employer in American Samoa employing 75% of the Samoan workforce.
Paul
Pelosi, Nancy's husband, owns $17 million dollars of Star-Kist stock.
In January,
2007 when the minimum wage was increased from $5.15 to $7.25, Pelosi had
American Samoa exempted from the increase so Del Monte would not have to pay
the higher wage. This would make Del Monte products less expensive than their
competition's.
Last week
when the huge bailout bill was passed, Pelosi added an earmark to the final
bill adding $33 million dollars for an "economic development credit in
American Samoa".
Pelosi has
called the Bush Administration "corrupt".
Check some
more for yourself
No money for teacher pay or
textbooks, but…
US CEO pay, bank profits, corporate cash set new records
By Barry Grey
18 April 2018
Across the
United States, workers are being told by Democrats and Republicans alike that
there is “no money” for decent wages, pensions or health care. Teachers
from West Virginia to Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona and other states are
rebelling against near-poverty wages and years of school cuts only to be told
by the politicians and union leaders that their demands are “unrealistic” and
cannot be met.
But a series
of reports on CEO pay, bank profits and corporate cash released over the past
week reveal that corporate America and the financial oligarchy are wallowing in
record levels of wealth. The Washington Post reported on Friday that, boosted
by the tax cut for corporations and the rich passed in December, the biggest US
firms “find themselves sitting on an Everest of cash,” with “profits pouring in
faster than they can find productive ways to spend it.”
“As of the
end of 2017,” the Post noted,
“companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index were sitting on the
largest cash pile in history: nearly $1.8 trillion.”
The
windfall from the Trump tax cut, passed with no serious opposition from the
Democrats, is not, contrary to the lies used to justify the law, going to
create new, good-paying jobs and rebuild the country’s crumbing infrastructure.
It is being used for stock buybacks, a parasitic squandering of the wealth
produced by the labor of the working class to drive up stock prices and the
portfolios of rich investors and corporate executives.
In February
alone, US corporations announced a single-month record $150.7 billion in
buybacks. They are expected to hit a new yearly record in 2018, surpassing the
previous record of $589 billion set in 2007, the year before the Wall Street
crash. Over the past 10 years, the American capitalist class has spent $5.1 trillion
in stock buybacks.
To put this
in perspective, the Oklahoma teachers, among the lowest-paid in the country,
demanded $200 million in additional school funding to begin to address a decade
of brutal cuts. The state government agreed to a mere $50 million, which the
Oklahoma Education Association hailed as a “victory.”
The amount
requested by the teachers represents a mere 0.01 percent of the cash being
hoarded by US corporations.
This “Mount
Everest” of cash controlled by perhaps one percent of the American people
towers above the sums allocated by the federal government for basic social
needs. The budget for the Department of Health and Human Services is only 60
percent of the corporate cash hoard. The corporate cash pile is 26 times the
Department of Education budget, 56 times the budget for Housing and Urban
Development, 150 times the Labor Department budget, and 225 times the budget of
the Environmental Protection Agency.
According to
a report on CEO pay released last week, requisitioning the combined pay of the
three highest-earning chief executives in 2017 would virtually cover the
Oklahoma teachers’ funding demand. Hock E. Tan (Broadcom) took in $103.2
million, Brian Duperreault (American International Group) received $42.8
million and Mark V. Hurd (Oracle) was paid $40.8 million, for a total of $186.8
million.
These
reports, taken together, give a picture of a society that is being ruthlessly
plundered by an unaccountable and avaricious financial oligarchy. The waste of
resources and diversion of social wealth into the hands of a fabulously rich
elite make it impossible to address any of the social problems confronting the
population.
The other
major squandering of resources is in the form of ever-expanding spending on the
military and the preparations of the US ruling class for global war.
CEO pay
On April 11,
the executive compensation research firm Equilar published its annual “Equilar
100” report, which examines CEO compensation at the 100 largest companies, by
revenue. The study showed that median compensation for the 100 CEOs rose by 5
percent in 2017 from the previous year to reach an 11-year high of $15.7
million.
The median
ratio of Equilar 100 CEO pay to that of a worker at the given company was 235
to one. However, some companies on the list had ratios even worse than the
median. Manpower Group, whose CEO received $12 million, reported the highest
ratio at 2,483 to one. The median pay of the company’s 600,000 workers was
$4,828. The retail chain Kohl’s had a ratio of 1,264 to one.
The average
pay of an Oklahoma teacher is $42,460. Median pay for Equilar 100 CEOs is 374
times that amount. The increase in median pay for Equilar 100 CEOs in
2017—$700,000—is itself 17 times the pay of the average Oklahoma teacher.
The
second-highest paid CEO, Brian Duperreault ($42.8 million), heads the insurance
giant American International Group (AIG), whose speculation in subprime
mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps played a central role in
the financial crisis a decade ago that destroyed the savings and livelihoods of
millions of people around the world and ushered in the Great Recession. His
firm was bailed out by the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury to the tune of
$150 billion.
Bank profits
Over the
past week the major Wall Street banks have reported record or near-record
profits for the first quarter of 2018. On Friday, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and
Wells Fargo reported a combined profit of more than $19 billion for the first
three months of the year.
JPMorgan,
the country’s biggest bank, reported a record quarterly net income of $8.71
billion. Its profits rose 35 percent over the same period a year ago. Earlier
this month, CEO Jamie Dimon issued a letter to
shareholders warning of rising wages and advising the Federal Reserve to
jack up interest rates in order to stunt economic growth and drive up
unemployment, so as to preempt the development of a nationwide wages movement.
It was a
similar story at Citigroup (13 percent profit rise) and Wells Fargo (8
percent). Bank of America on Monday reported a 34 percent profit increase and
Goldman Sachs on Tuesday said its profits jumped 26 percent.
A
substantial part of the profit surge on Wall Street was due to the massive cut
in the corporate tax rate. The five banks combined saved well above $2 billion
as a result of a drastic reduction in their effective tax rates.
Speaking of
the windfall from the tax law and other policies being implemented by Trump,
with the tacit support of the Democrats, Citigroup Chief Financial Officer John
Gerspach told reporters Friday that companies had only begun to take advantage
of the changes. “I think the best is yet to come,” he said.
Putting an
end to social inequality and the capitalist system that produces it are
essential to providing employment, education, health care, housing, a
comfortable retirement, access to culture, a safe environment and a modern
infrastructure—that is, securing the basic social rights of the working class.
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