![\"John](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/john_thain_briefing.jpg?resize=333%2C231&ssl=1\" "\\"john_thain_briefing\\"")
It would be comical if the financial picture wasn’t so grim, but big financiers seem to expect help without accountability for it and appear to have no shame about screwing the country’s pocketbook in the first place. $700 billion in taxpayer money? No big sweat. Remember the arrival of General Motors executives by private jet to request funds from Congress to bail out the ailing auto industry? They were sent home to think about it some more and try again later.<\/p>\n
Outgoing Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain used $1.2 million of Merrill Lynch’s money in 2007 to re-decorate the bathroom of his executive suite.\u0412 This was the company that later in 2008 would be asking for bailout help from the government. Citigroup, a recipient of $45 billion in federal bailout funds was shamed into returning<\/a> its $50 million company jet, purchased using bailout funds.\u0412 Bank of America used a portion of federal bailout funds<\/a>\u0412 to host a conference call to garner political support, including a plan to fund the re-election of key Republicans in Congress to defeat passing of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a law that would protect workers’ rights to unionize. AP reports today<\/a> that a large number of banks that received bailout funds hired foreign workers under the H1-B visa program, neglecting American workers elegible for the same jobs, while the jobless rate is now 7.2%, the highest in 10 years.<\/a><\/p>\n President Obama went ballistic when it was discovered that at the end of last year $18 billion from the first bailout was used to pay employee bonuses at major financial houses. On top of that it seems that amount was relatively paltry to the industry.\u0412 Says The <\/a><\/em>N<\/a>ew York Times<\/a><\/em>:<\/a><\/p>\n Without a doubt, $18 billion is a lot of money, but it’s a drop in the bucket on Wall Street, said Gustavo Dolfino, president of the WhiteRock Group, a headhunter for the banks. These bonuses are down, and the salaries are not enough for these people.\u0412 They can’t live on $150,000 to $180,000, so they haven’t saved any money.<\/strong>\u0412 They put it on credit lines and at bonus time, they thought they’d pay it off. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now if the thought of not being able to live on $150 to $180 thousand a year isn’t jaw-dropping enough for those of us who can barely afford the minimum payment on our monthly credit card bills, there is a short and to-the-point diary in Daily Kos that gives a perfect snapshot on how the financial industry views its\u0412 \u0412 love-hate relationship<\/a> with our government.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Having watched the Reagan years with dismay, the disdain by uber<\/em> capitalists over government support coupled with their sense of entitlement in receiving it is comedy gold. These are the same people who decades ago demonized poor people on government assistance as “welfare queens”, forcing people on general assistance to be more accountable with less than $10,000 per year in public assistance than they are at $45 billion.<\/p>\n It seems that the new beneficiaries of social welfare for the rich have forgotten who the government is ultimately accountable to: us. In the face of this financial crisis, the Republican party, long hailed the party of fiscal responsibility and virulently anti-New Deal is sitting this one out,<\/a> in spite of every effort by the Obama Administration to include them in a bipartisan problem-solving process needed now for the nation. They have no interest in helping Obama or a New Deal in the footsteps of Roosevelt to succeed. It would destroy their brand. While Rome burns, they seem to be content playing fiddle with Rush Limbaugh.<\/p>\n This transition is Pluto moving from the exuberant and extravagant Sagittarius into Capricorn, the sign of government, frugality and regulation. This cycle of transformation begins with the death throes of one phase and the birth of another. Planet Waves’ Next World Stories contributor Maria Katzenbach describes it in her article “Pluto in Capricorn as the Liberation of Dionysus” as this:<\/p>\n “Dionysus dies and is reborn. His core quality is transformation, Pluto’s core energy, which we see in Dionysus’ signature medium, theatre, in which human beings become characters they are not. The same process underlies cultural change, becoming a new kind of human being, acquiring a new human identity.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Welcome to the theater of Pluto in Capricorn. In the opening act set in America, we find the gods tearing down the financial house in order to rebuild, preparing us for the transition. In this play, there are those who watch in horror as this happens, and those who cling to the old ways of the house as it used to be. There are those in complete denial that the destruction of their soon-to-be-former way of life is even happening.\u0412 Whether tragic or comic, their resistance to the reality of change facing all of us makes them clowns. Has anybody told them yet that the good old days of Saint Ronnie Reagan are over? Or will the floor underneath need to collapse before these folks finally wake up and recognize the house is getting razed? <\/p>\n Perhaps they all need to pile into a tiny three-seater corporate jet and just fly away. I think we need to call a few of these people<\/a> to get them to wake up move on.<\/p>\n Yours & truly,<\/p>\n Fe Bongolan<\/strong> Dear Friend and Reader: It’s nothing short of amazing how shamelessly unaware and cavalier the financial sector seems to be about the efforts to save them. Call me naive, but let me put this delicately. There seems to be\u0412 a complete disconnect from reality informing the actions of the leaders of financial institutions in the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1,762],"tags":[258,1788,52,247,1799,313],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSan Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"