Larry Fink is upset. Larry is the founder of the Private Equity firm, Blackstone. He is a sort of moneylender, speculator and social parasite all rolled in to one. He is unhappy with the banks and Wall Street. The thinning out of the different moneylenders and speculators due to the economic crisis has reduced competition among them and Larry says those left standing are taking, "advantage of reduced competition to charge their customers more for even basic trades."
I mean, this is just plain unfair. Larry only earned $41 .2 million in 2007 and doesn't like being taken advantage of, especially by the banks. “They’re just taking the spread between the bid and the ask [the price gap between buyers and sellers] and they are making very luxurious returns." he whines.
So Larry, whose company manages about $3 trillion in cash and who, according to one commentator is "joined at the hip" with the Federal Reserve and the US treasury wants to use his clout to reduce the cost of trades so people like him can stuff their pockets with even more cash. Two groups of thieves are squabbling over how much they can steal from workers.
So Larry and those like him earn billions, the bankers earn "luxurious profits" and meanwhile Union leaders in California and throughout the country are helping employers attack workers rights, wages and benefits in order to help the economy.
The budget deal worked out by the the Democrats and Republicans here in the California State legislature has $15 billion in spending cuts, $6 billion from kindergarten and community colleges, and $2.8 billion from higher education. State workers are getting a 14% pay cut through forced furloughs saving another $1.3 billion. This is the work of both parties. Working people have no voice in government.
"..Make no mistake, this is a budget of shared sacrifice and shared pain." says Karen Bass, a Democrat and state Assembly speaker. These are the people trade Union leaders tell us to vote for. This vicious assault on working people is through the collaboration between politicians of the two parties of capitalism supported by the leaders of organized Labor.
I took one of my grandchildren to his swimming lessons this morning at one of the few available swimming pools. This one is at the local high school and we pay for the lessons. He is seven and it was a treat to watch him and the other children as they gained confidence in the water.
At the same time I felt a lot of anger. Anger at the politicians, anger at the Labor leaders for cooperating with the assault, and anger at a system that perpetuates such inequality and is so destructive to the environment. Most of all I was reminded that it is the youth and children like my grand kids that are being sold down the river; it is their future that rotten bastards like Larry Fink is destroying in their rapacious thirst for profits, for money without productive work.
We owe it to those workers that fought and gave us the freedoms and rights we have today to defend them but we also owe it to the youth, to our children to leave them a world in which they can feel secure and reach their true potential as human beings. We owe it to them to defend the natural world and the environment that capitalism ravages in its quest for exchange value.
We can build such a society and even guarantee wasters like Larry Fink a job, something his kind denies to the everyone else. Their wealth is dependent on poverty, constant war and insecurity for the vast majority of the world's population.
Looking in to a child's eyes is a great motivator. As the old IWW saying goes, "Don't mourn, organize."
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