Class Warfare

It really does exist;

Some Wall Street firms are looking for ways to sidestep tough new federal caps on compensation.

In response to expected bonus restrictions, officials at Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley and other financial institutions that got government aid are discussing increasing base salaries for some executives and other top-producing employees, people familiar with the situation said.

The crackdown, part of the economic-stimulus package passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last month, limits bonus pay for the top five executives of any recipient of taxpayer capital through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, plus the 20 next-highest-compensated employees.

There really is no two ways to look at it. Wealthy people in the United State, the top few percent, own the vast majority of the wealth in this nation. That is beyond question. With that wealth comes the ability to set the rules for everyone else.

The board of directors sets salaries for top executives. Top executives set salaries for the people under them in the food chain. It's not unusual for board members to serve on boards of multiple companies, and they use is as a method to redirect wealth to their associates.

What takes real balls is to do it in companies that have received vast amounts of tax payer money, and then turn around and look for ways to circumvent the government rules on compensation.

This will never change. The wealth gap in the US will steadily increase. Always.

As Morpheus would say.. You are a slave Neo.

Alan Greenspan famously admitted;

Asked by committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, whether his free-market convictions pushed him to make wrong decisions, especially his failure to rein in unsafe mortgage lending practices, Greenspan replied that indeed he had found a flaw in his ideology, one that left him very distressed. "In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology was not right?" Waxman asked.

"Absolutely, precisely," replied Greenspan, who stepped down as Fed chief in 2006 after more than 18 years as chairman. "That's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence it was working exceptionally well."

Greenspan thought that the "free market" would regulate itself because of the profit motive. He thought the executives had an intrinsic motive to protect share holder worth. He was wrong, of course. The motive of business is personal enrichment. Share holder worth is a distant secondary consideration.

I think Greenspan was being disingenuous though. He had to know how business ethics have changed, encouraged by right wing ideology.

History shows there's only one way this will ever change. Ask a Frenchman about it.

It would never happen here. They don't suggest we eat cake. They suggest we eat iPods.. keeping us at just the standard of living required to keep the peasants from going all Marie Antoinette on them.