As workers suffer, Wall Street speculators rake in the dough

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the paper's analysis of securities filings for the first six months of the year reveal record earning potential in 2009 for the moneylenders.  "Major US banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year---a record high.." writes the Journal.

Moneylenders and speculators, people the WSJ mistakenly calls "workers", are expect to earn more than they did in the "peak" year of 2007. The average earnings for these coupon clippers this year is expected to hit $143,000, up $2000 from pre-crash 2007.  They're back to their old tricks. I guess the recession is over for some.

The boost in income is due to what the WSJ refers to as "..a resurgence in deal making and the continuing effect of various government aid programs."  There may be a resurgence in "deal making" but we're not making much else. The construction industry lost a million jobs in the past year, one fifth of all jobs lost.

Las Vegas, which, for construction, was a boom town since gone bust, attracted 15,000 travelers in the good times. Travelers are Union construction workers who travel all around the country seeking work from other Union halls other than their own.  Vegas had 20,000 fewer construction jobs in August than it did a year earlier. One worker, a 60 year-old electrician, told the Wall Street Journal that he had worked out of 43 Union halls.  His is reconsidering his retirment plans now.

As workers endure the worst crisis we have had to face in years, many of us in our lifetimes, with lost homes, jobs, and futures; the coupon clippers are on their way to preparing the ground for the next one.

At the height of the crisis, which is not yet over,  the Obama administration feared, as the capitalist class as a whole did, the anger that they felt and saw all around them.  The hatred for bankers and the rich; the questioning of capitalism and the market.  The mood was, and still is such that they are unwilling to use the term capitalism to describe their system as studies they have commissioned have revealed that the average worker associates the term with greed, the strong dominating the weak and the cause of the crisis. They are concerned this anger could break out in to the streets, could take organizational form.

So Obama warned them last January, "There will be time to make profits" "..there will be time to get bonuses...now's not that time."

I always used to say to other active Union members at work who became skeptical that the membership would never get active because things were too good, that our best ally is the boss, they won't stop. The economic system we live in is a brutal exploitive one;their wealth has its source in this exploitation. The system drives them to attack us, and it drives us to defend ourselves.

I guess telling them that there will be time to get bonuses is one promise Obama intends to keep.