Wall Street,Main Street and Populist Rage

People still haven't stopped talking about the hundred and sixty-five million dollars that AIG doled out in bonuses to top execs and who can blame them. Public outrage is growing as the gulf between Wall Street and Main Street deepens. The new buzz word is "populist rage" and that doesn't begin to describe it.

Ever since the bubble burst last year, Americans have been losing their jobs and their homes at a record rate. 37 million people are now on food stamps. 47 million are without adequate health insurance. Last month the nation lost 651,000 jobs. Unemployment is at 8.1% overall and in double digits for blacks and hispanics. Life is not good here on Main Street and it doesn't look like it's going to get better any time soon. But thanks to the bail out, business seems to be booming on Wall Street.

Main Street vs. Wall Street

Those of us who live and work down here on Main Street, got treated to a series of stunning events as fall gave way to winter and winter turned to spring. Most of us watched it unfold on our TV screens. First, the government bailed out the banking system, the automobile companies, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. and AIG by keeping the U.S. Treasury printing presses working overtime making dollars--trillions of them. "Too big to fail" became the watchword of the day. Pessimists smelled a giant governmental Ponzi scheme in the making. Optimists hoped for the best. " The recession will be over in a year or two" they said. Nobody mentioned the inflation and currency devaluation that must inevitably follow.

Down here on Main Street, amid the For Sale and Foreclosure signs, we've watched the CEO's of Fannie and Freddie walk away with huge golden parachutes. We've seen Merrill-Lynch's head honcho use government bail out money( i.e. our tax dollars) to hand big bonuses to a few of his pals on the way out the door, and finally we've gasped at the gall of AIG, the company that went belly up insuring the whole mess, as it collected trillions in bail out funds only to turn around and give millions in bye bye bonuses to a few chosen ones. Good luck to Congress and the Obama Administration trying to get those bonuses back. It's not gonna happen.

So, let me see, these guys screwed the American public, got fat comissions and bonuses for doing so all along the line, destroyed public confidence in the financial system and turned the nation into one big hedge fund. Great-- and now they are going to just walk away while the rest of us are left to pick up the pieces.

Populist rage? You betcha

Madoff Does the Ponzi Scheme Perp Walk

I'm so glad Bernie Madoff is in jail tonight. He's been living large on the Upper East Side, ever since his arrest last December and that has really galled me. I mean a man who can run a Ponzi Scheme that bilks people all over the world out of an estimated fifty billion dollars doesn't deserve to be sitting around in his posh digs with nothing but an ankle bracelet to restrain him.

Tonight, at least, he'll put his head down on a lumpy pillow in a tiny cell in Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center. Quite a change for him, but well deserved. I have to say it does my heart good. Maybe what goes around really does come around after all.

I'm just one of the little people and I didn't have any money invested in Madoff's Ponzi scheme but thousands of honest individuals, institutional investors and charitable foundations did. The stories are shocking. You've read them in magazines and seen the victims interviewed on TV-- the wealthy retired couple who used to live in Palm Beach and are now eeking it out day to day in a mobile home, the eighty year old who has gone back to work, the children's charity that is closing its doors-- the list is long. But even as the victims were crying the blues, Bernie was kicking back in his luxury penthouse and his wife was mailing packages filled with Harry Winston jewelry to her cousins and withdrawing fifteen million bucks from the bank. That should keep the wolf from the door for awhile.

I can't wait for the trial to begin. I think lots of dirt is going to come up from under the carpet. Bernie took the spear and entered a guilty plea, insisting that he acted alone. But investigators don't think so. He had an office full of employees and his two sons worked in the family business. Impressive looking completely fraudulent statements were sent out regularly. Surely, Bernie was not entirely surrounded by innocent bystanders.

At least one SEC whistle blower smelled a rat. There had to be others who did too. And why was nothing done? The SEC, the FBI and the New York State Attorney General's Office are on the case now and I bet they are going to dig up plenty. I hope so anyway. I want to believe that there really is justice in the world.

At least Bernie Madoff is sleeping in a jail cell tonight. That's a good beginning.