November 13, 2009 by Rick Claypool
No Christmas parties for Goldman Sachs this year according to this insightful piece by Jessica Toonkel Marquez in Investment News.
In an attempt to keep a low profile, The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has told its employees that it won’t be hosting a corporate Christmas party this year. The investment bank is also prohibiting employees from funding their own parties, an insider at the firm told InvestmentNews.
The Christmas party ban comes as Goldman has been under sharp public criticism for paying bigger bonuses this year while national unemployment hovers at 10.2% and many workers have taken pay cuts.
The take away? They have no shame about the radical redistribution of wealth from our economy into their own coffers ( from the article: “Last year, Goldman paid out $4.8 billion in bonuses, awarding 953 employees at least $1 million each and 78 employees at least $4 million. The rewards this year are expected to be greater.”). BUT they are increasingly sensitive to the fact that images of them flaunting this wealth make most Americans want to join an angry mob (including me … if you’re in D.C. on Monday at noon, come to the protest and rally at the Goldman Sachs headquarters on Capitol Hill).
Truly, appearances matter. But if Goldman Sachs was truly concerned about the fact that its bonus recipients will be wallowing in cash while the rest of us are still reeling from the crisis it helped create, George Goehl, director of National People’s Action, has a suggestion (from Huffington Post):
Word on the street is that Goldman is anticipating a $23 billion bonus pool in 2009. Yes, the same firm that we rescued with a $10 billion taxpayer bailout a year ago, is now preparing to hand out up to $23 billion in bonuses. If Goldman wanted to do their part to clean up a mess that they helped create (and clean up their image), a good place to start would be the creation of a foreclosure prevention program. A one billion dollar contribution from Goldman’s bonus pool would prevent 200,000 foreclosures. A few billion would go a long way toward helping stem the cresting tide of foreclosures.
What do you say, banksters? It would be a nice gesture. (But still not as nice as Congress imposing a windfall bonus tax on these guys to repair the damage they caused).
Flickr photo by tempo.
Posted in Activism, Congress, Financial Regulation, Social Justice | Tagged Activism, corporate power, financial reform, goldman sachs | 1 Comment »
November 13, 2009 by Editor
(Cross-posted from Eyes on Trade)
If you opened the Washington Post this morning, you might have been surprised to find an opinion piece on the barriers that World Trade Organization (WTO) rules pose for climate solutions. More surprisingly, the authors were a rather odd couple – our own Lori Wallach (longtime fair trade reformer), and C. Fred Bergsten (longtime trade agreement promoter). Here’s a snippet:
There is a real danger that a collision between climate policy and trade agreements could derail two critical goals: controlling climate change and expanding trade.
But this danger is avoidable.
We are an unusual pair of advocates for this message. For a long time, we and our organizations have been on opposite ends of the debate over trade agreements, disagreeing about their effects on economies, livelihoods and domestic regulations.But we agree on a surprising number of aspects of the climate-change debate and on the related need to overhaul global trade negotiations, which are stalled by disagreements and the worldwide financial crisis.
They go on to warn that “Implementing a treaty on global warming could require Continue Reading »
Posted in Climate Change, Trade | Tagged fair trade, free trade, wto | Leave a Comment »
November 12, 2009 by Rick Claypool
What? You disagree? Well, that’s what came up on last night’s Colbert Report. In an interview with the Times of London, the CEO of Goldman Sachs — a colossal Wall St. firm that, along with others, took our economy to the brink last year — claimed the firm is “doing God’s work.” The CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, is also the mostly highly paid Wall St. CEO, raking in $68 million annually. Meanwhile, millions are coping with unemployment and have lost their homes. Great work, pal.
Clearly, Blankfein and the rest on Wall St. have no idea what it’s like here in the real economy. Time get in their face to show them. Come to D.C. this Monday, Nov. 16 for a protest and rally with Public Citizen’s president, Robert Weissman, in front of the Goldman Sachs Washington headquarters on Capitol Hill.
What: Protest the banksters in front of Goldman Sachs and rally at the Capitol.
Where: Goldman Sachs, 101 Constitution Ave NW, Washington, D.C. (close to Union Station).
When: Monday, Nov. 16 at High Noon.
See you there! Let us know you’re coming here.
Posted in Activism, Congress, Financial Regulation | Tagged colbert, Congress, corporate power, financial reform, wall street | Leave a Comment »
November 11, 2009 by Robert Weissman
Weissman
Thursday marks the 10-year anniversary of the passage of the repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and related legislation. It is an anniversary worth noting for what it teaches us about forestalling financial crises, the consequences of maniacal deregulation and the out-of-control political power of the mega-financial institutions.
What lessons should be learned from the 10-year debacle?
First, Glass-Steagall’s key insight was in the need to treat regulation from an industry structure point of view. Glass-Steagall’s authors did not set out to establish a regulatory system to oversee companies that combined commercial banking and investment banking. They simply banned the combination of these enterprises. Cleaning up the current mess, we need strategies that focus on industry structure, as well as more traditional regulation.
Second, we need to return to Glass-Steagall’s more particular understanding: Depository institutions backed by federal insurance protection cannot be involved in the risky, speculative betting of the investment banking world. We need not just to reinstate Glass-Steagall, but to infuse its underlying principles throughout the financial regulatory scheme. Commercial banks should not be in the business of speculation. They have a job to do in providing credit to the real economy. They should do that. Their job is not to engage in betting on derivatives and other exotic financial instruments.
Third, giant financial institutions exercise too much political power, and for that reason alone must be broken up.
Fourth, we need broad reform in the area of money and politics. We need public financing of congressional elections, even stronger lobbyist reforms and tight restrictions to close the revolving door through which individuals spin as they travel between positions in government and industry.
Robert Weissman is president of Public Citizen.
Posted in Congress, Financial Regulation | Tagged banking, Glass-Steagall, wall street | 4 Comments »
November 11, 2009 by Christine Hines
In Virginia, there is a special word for being victimized by medical malpractice – being “Plotnicked.” Virginia doctor Stephen Plotnick became so notorious for injuring patients that his name is now the word for what happens when doctors make mistakes. It is shocking that any doctor could earn such a shameful tribute without being stopped first. But the Virginia Board of Medicine failed to suspend Plotnick’s medical license until after five patients died on his watch and he was sued six times.
The medical profession suffers from a lack of accountability on more mundane matters as well.
In last month’s New England Journal of Medicine, Drs. Robert Wachter and Peter Pronovost write that physicians frequently neglect simple practices such as hand washing. They attribute this failure to “lax enforcement of safety rules.”
The need for enforcement could hardly be greater. In the 17 years since the federal government’s National Practitioner Data Bank was created to track reports of doctor discipline, nearly 50 percent of U.S. hospitals have failed to submit a single report, according to a Public Citizen study. The deficient reporting stems mostly from hospitals failing to Continue Reading »
Posted in Health | Tagged doctors, malpractice | 5 Comments »
November 10, 2009 by Robert Weissman
More than a year after the onset of the financial crisis, three things are apparent: Congress has not passed any financial reform legislation (except for credit card rules); the more time passes, the more Wall Street objects to the prospect of any meaningful controls of its operations; and the legislation that has so far progressed in Congress is not commensurate with the scale of the crisis Wall Street caused.
Today, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) kick starts the regulatory reform process in the Senate. We are particularly pleased that he has proposed a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), with powers to monitor practices of small banks and a strong role for states to go beyond the federal regulatory floor to protect their citizens. A strong CFPA would have protected consumers from the predatory loans and abusive practices of the past decade – and, thereby, lessened the severity of the financial crisis.
We look forward to working with Chairman Dodd and members of the Senate to adopt the strong regulations needed to rein in Wall Street abuses. We know, of course, that Wall Street and the big banks will leverage their Continue Reading »
Posted in Congress, Financial Regulation | Tagged banking, Dodd, economics, economy, reform, wall street | Leave a Comment »
November 6, 2009 by Editor
By John Sparks
This morning, in spite of strong support from health care advocates like Public Citizen, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) agreed to withdraw his single-payer health care amendment from consideration as the House approaches a floor vote on the major health care package supported by the Democratic leadership and President Obama.
This news may not surprise many who believed single-payer to be dead on arrival in today’s healthcare reform debate. But even political insiders were stunned by the resurrection of the possibility of a single-payer vote. Over the past week, activists across the country and the coalition of pro-single-payer organizations in Washington got behind Weiner’s campaign to offer an amendment and forced the leadership to seriously reconsider a floor vote.
Weiner acknowledged that last-minute developments caused him to make the difficult decision to withdraw the proposal. The chief reasons stemmed from pressure on Continue Reading »
Posted in Activism, Congress, Health | Tagged Activism, Congress, health & safety, single-payer | 5 Comments »
November 5, 2009 by Robert Weissman
There is only one solution to the twin problems of escalating health care costs and the epidemic of the uninsured: a Medicare-for-All, single payer system.
Unfortunately, the healthcare debate on Capitol Hill has evolved without serious consideration of the Medicare-for-All single payer health proposal. There are many reasons for this, but one is that many who actually support Medicare-for-All have claimed that the proposal is “not feasible.”
With the House leadership having settled on a single proposal, now is the time to set aside worries about feasibility. The House process is resolved. Members of Congress should have the opportunity to vote on the merits, up-or-down, on a Medicare-for-All single payer health proposal.
Whether they will have this chance is in the hands of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and is likely to be decided soon. Contact her right away to urge that the House be permitted to vote on a Medicare-for-All single payer health proposal. Call (202) 225-0100 or (as a second best alternative, submit comments on the Speaker’s web page).
Representative Anthony Weiner, D-New York, has proposed to introduce such a Medicare-for-All measure on the House floor in the form of an Continue Reading »
Posted in Activism, Congress, Health | Tagged health care, Kucinich, Medicare, Pelosi, single-payer, Weiner | 1 Comment »
November 4, 2009 by Tyson Slocum
Climate change requires us to rethink and transform the ways we produce and consume energy and the way we transport goods and people. But draft legislation being considered by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (S.1733) fails to hold polluters accountable and falls short of empowering locally controlled sustainable energy.
There is no question that Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) understand the threat posed by climate change and are passionate about and committed to addressing the problem. They are environmental champions. But the draft bill contains compromises, flaws, loopholes and giveaways that defeat its purpose.
The bill is too similar to the flawed legislation passed in June by the House of Representatives that prioritizes nuclear power and coal over solar and wind power, and puts corporate utilities before community-owned power. Science tells us that we must act now to lower our emissions of greenhouse gases, but this legislation locks us in to our coal and oil addictions and relies on a dubious Continue Reading »
Posted in Climate Change, Congress, Energy | Tagged nuclear, oil, solar, wind | 1 Comment »
November 4, 2009 by Joe Newman
Back in the day when I was a young newspaper reporter, we never heard of your Internets and could only dream about the Googles. When we wanted campaign information, we spent days in some dank backroom at the supervisor of elections office, buried under a mountain of documents. And making copies at 10 cents a page added up fast. I can’t imagine what life would have been like if we had access to the online data available at some of the Web sites Katie Donnelly spotlights in her post “10 Projects that help Citizens become Government Watchdogs” at MediaShift.
With the 2010 U.S. elections coming into view, many people are looking for more information about the people running for office — and the individuals and organizations funding these candidates.
Fortunately, there are dozens of initiatives that mine and share the data that influence policy and policy-makers. Many are funded by The Sunlight Foundation, which aims to use “the revolutionary power of the Internet to make information about Congress and the federal government more meaningfully accessible to citizens.”
I’ve heard of and used most of the sites Donnelly lists, including SourceWatch, OpenSecrets and MapLight. But there are a couple interesting finds such as LittleSis, which she describes as an “involuntary Facebook” for government officials. You could spend all day playing around with that site, tracking relationships between politicians, lobbyists and campaign contributors.
Posted in Campaign Finance, Open Government | Tagged Public Records, Watchdog | Leave a Comment »
