Wall Street may be having a bad week, but top bankers are doing wonderfully well. After a blockbuster year, the five biggest Wall Street banks just paid out $142 billion in bonuses and compensation for 2021. This was $18 billion more than in 2020. JPMorgan Chase reported record profits, and Citigroup’s annual profit more than doubled. Let me remind you (as if you need reminding) that 2020 and 2021 were not exactly blockbuster years for the rest of America.
In the first three decades after World War II, American companies made money by making things, selling them at a profit, and investing the profits in additional productive capacity. This helped create the largest middle class the world had ever seen. In those years, the financial sector accounted for 15 percent of U.S. corporate profits.
Then something happened. By the mid-1980s, the financial sector claimed 30 percent of corporate profits. By 2001, 40 percent — more than four times the profits made in all U.S. manufacturing.
Why this dramatic change? Indulge me a moment as I quote from a […]
This analysis is spot on. The question is how to get out of this cycle? Neither major party offers a solution, just more of the same or worst. It will be up to us to protect ourselves as best we may, and invest our energies into sustainable endeavors at the local level. As I write this our county has just concluded its longest war. At the same time we rattle sabers toward Russia, a nuclear power. Wall Street requires war. We have learned nothing.