Well, surprise, surprise. A President elected on the pledge to help the working class has once again opted instead to preside over an even faster acceleration of wealth concentration at the very top of America’s pyramid scheme economy.
They all talk a great game, but once they take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue they take care of the people this country is owned by.
On this there is a bipartisan through line that started in the 1970s when average working class Americans saw their purchasing power start to slide, even as their productivity sky rocketed and the wealth generated by that labor was increasingly pocketed by the folks at the top.
This month marked the tenth anniversary of the spectacular collapse of Lehman Brothers and by every measure it would appear that the banksters that heisted $20 trillion in American family wealth are living larger than ever.
According to the New York State Comptroller Wall Street’s pretax profits totaled $13.7 billion in the first half of 2018, 11 percent higher than last year. Last year, pretax profits spiked 42 percent to $24.5 billion, which was up dramatically from the not too shabby 21 percent jump in previous the previous year.
“Wall Street has profited every year since the end of the recession in 2009, and compensation last year reached its highest point since the financial crisis,” said New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli in a press release hailing the finance industry’s robust performance.
– Salon