Shared Sacrifice: Where's Wall Street's Share?

[Donnachaidh]

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/19/shared_sacrifice_wheres_wall_streets_share/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tpmcafe-main+%28TPMCafe%29

The theme in Washington these days is "shared sacrifice." Many of the country's most prominent political figures are insisting that the public must get used to sacrifice. This means giving up some of the benefits, like Social Security and Medicare, that they have come to rely upon.

The shared sacrifice might also mean that middle-income people have to pay higher taxes. Telling a country that is suffering from near double-digit unemployment that it must get used to sacrifice might seem a bit strange, but polite Washington circles have never had much connection to the lives of normal people.

Even more striking than this push to impose even more sacrifice on a middle class that has already paid an enormous cost for the economic policies of the last three decades is the fact that the Wall Street is not expecting to share in these future sacrifices. This is peculiar since reckless Wall Street greed played a central role in inflating the housing bubble whose collapse gave us the current economic crisis.

The Wall Street banks also tapped taxpayers for trillions of dollars in below market loans at the peak of the crisis, allowing them to avoid bankruptcy. Thanks to the taxpayers' generosity, the Wall Street banks are now back on their feet again, as profitable as ever with the bonus pools slated to hit record highs.

More at the link ---