Wall Street: "You try to live on only $500,000!"

"News from the White House that $500,000 was the cap the government wants to put on executive salaries at the banks receiving bailout cash had some on Wall Street and along the plush corridors of Manhattan's swank Upper East Side hollering "Unfair!" (But without those unsightly street demonstrations and picket lines, of course.)

"You Try to Live on 500K in This Town" was the tongue-in-cheek headline in last Sunday's New York Times. Just add up private school tuition, mortgage payments, maintenance fees and wages for the nanny and you're already up to more than $250,000 a year - and that's pre-taxes, assuming you're paying any. Then tote up payments and upkeep on vacation and weekend homes, charity balls, car and driver - pretty soon you're maxing out your American Express Black Card. But they work hard for their multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses, perks and solid gold benefits, complained some of the financiers. Besides, executive headhunters say, the money giants just can't get good help for anything less.

Good help? Spare us the kind of moguls who helped us straight into the current deep, dirty hole we're trying to climb out of. "Like spoiled, petulant children," is how Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein described them. "These guys won't be happy until the government agrees to relieve them of every last one of their lousy loans and investments at inflated prices, recapitalize every major bank and brokerage and insurance company on sweetheart terms and restore them to the glory days, so they can once again earn inflated profits and obscene pay packages by screwing over their customers and their shareholders."

The problem is that via millions spent for political contributions and lobbying efforts, the revolving door that sees elites shuttle between jobs in government and business, and by creating a situation in which technical knowledge is limited to a privileged few, the banking and financial services industry has become a kind of ruling oligarchy that stifles attempts to shake up the status quo and make the real change necessary to get us out of the current crisis. "Either you break the power," Johnson said, "or we're stuck for a long time with this arrangement.” Johnson doubts the political will exists to do what needs to be done.

According to Tuesday's Boston Herald, last August, another former Treasury Secretary and Rubin pal, Lawrence Summers, now chairman of the of the National Economic Council, hitched a ride back from the Democratic National Convention on board a Citigroup corporate jet - "the same type that... Citigroup infamously wanted to replace last month with a new $50 million French jet." Summers didn't pay for the trip, but Citi said it has paid the appropriate taxes. The Herald reported that the plane "was the same one former Citi chief executive Sandy Will took on vacation to Mexico last month, it reportedly includes a full bar, crystal stemware and 'pillows made from Hermès scarves.'" When you've got it, flaunt it, Larry. Why go to hell in a handbasket when you can fly there executive class, leaning back on a French silk pillow? It's good to be part of an oligarchy."

- http://www.consortiumnews.com/

Excuse me while I go cry buckets of bitter tears for these poor deprived souls...