Orleans

As we have discussed earlier, lawyers who have successfully litigated with these outfits have called this nothing but grant larceny.  I had the discussion with my banker at Capital One who could only rationalize that it was being considered because “they had to raise money somewhere.” We all know that the defense that “you needed the money” is both the truest and least effective response any criminal can make.

The Times did a sad service with a front page article on the shrewd calculations that Bank of America and its colleagues have made by pushing direct and automatic payments for customers to their regular vendors from utilities to credit card companies to home mortgages and back again.  The story was an easy reminder for readers both how easy it is to sign up for such payments and how hard it is to unravel them to the degree you become welded to your bank regardless of the outrageous charges and abuse.   We are near the point where we are going to need to demand an easier “exit” policy from our banks, just as we had to achieve with our cell phone companies around keeping our phone numbers in recent years.  The little things can kill you!

Even though Occupy has not been successful in seeing any traction on the urgent “Geithner Must Go!” campaign to hold him responsible for some much of the Wall Street pandering and pampering he led first as the critically important head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the storm may finally be coming on the horizon.  Amazingly a story in today’s Times documents the giveaway with AIG where banks were paid in full from the federal coffers and were not asked to take any haircut, but in face were even required to shave.  Even banks that offered to take less that they were owed were informed by Geithner’s Fed, since he was head at the time, that they would be paid in full.

At least Geithner, now at Treasuery, with Ben Bernacke at the Federal Reserve are having to line up to finally provide some regulation for non-bank banks in recent hearings in the wake of Occupy.  Of course it is not enough, but even bringing 30 financial institutions like Mass Mutual, Zurich, some hedge funds and outfits like Blackrock and others under regulation because they control over $50 Billion in assets is something.  The Financial Stability Oversight Council still has to wait for comments so the lobbyists will be feeding at the trough, but at least now they need to realize that they might have to reckon with real, immediate, and potentially powerful political outrage if the boys give yet another break to the bankers.

New Orleans

Among the numbers popping up everywhere a Time Magazine/SRBI poll referenced by Charles M. Blow of the Times indicated that 54% of those polled are responding “favorably” to the protests.  86% believe that “Wall Street and lobbyists have too much influence in Washington.”  79% hold that “the gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. is too large.” 71% believe – listen to this President Obama and Secretary of the Treasury Geithner – “Executives of financial institutions responsible for the financial meltdown in 2008 should be prosecuted.”  68% have finally decided that “The rich should pay more taxes.”  And, finally, given the deep cynicism more than half, 56%, believe the “movement will have no impact on American politics.”

At the end of last year the well respected Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reported that the income inequality in the United Stated had hit record highs since such reporting was documented.  During the period covered in the late 2010 period income at the top had risen by $180,000 and at the bottom by only $400.  The gap may be even larger at the end of this year.  Last week another study found that the income inequality in the United States now leads all other industrialized nations in the world.    What a sorry situation!

The only real surprise these days is that the polling data doesn’t indicate even more consensus that public policy slanted towards avarice and the rich has gone too far.  Little is being done to change it so, politicians and policy makers are obviously going to keep waving a red (green?) flag in our faces until we stand up and force the change.

Baltimore

The bullet points though are riveting:

• “… a typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage violations, out of average weekly earnings of $339. That translates into a 15 percent loss in pay.”
• “Only 8 percent of those who suffered serious injuries on the job filed for compensation to pay for medical care and missed days at work stemming from those injuries.”
• “…26 percent of the workers had been paid less than the minimum wage the week before being surveyed…”
• “… one in seven had worked off the clock the previous week.”
• “…76 percent of those who had worked overtime the week before were not paid their proper overtime…”
• “Of workers who receive tips, 12 percent said their employer had stolen some of the tips.”
• “One in five workers reported having lodged a complaint about wages to their employer or trying to form a union in the previous year…”
• “…43 percent of them said they had experienced some form of illegal retaliation, like firing or suspension….”

So, even with just the headlines and without reading the unreleased report, the “news” is clear:  low wage workers are robbed when well and when hurt by being paid less than the minimum wage, wrong overtime, and off the clock, but they are not passive and a significant minority are willing to stand up and do something, but almost half are brutalized on the job by intimidation tactics and slap down retaliations.

The DOL Secretary says she’s hiring 200 more Wage and Hour inspectors, but clearly that is inadequate after years of neglect, and there has been no reform of labor laws yet, so pretty much today is another day in the working life and the unwritten law for many businesses is that this just means it is another good day to steal from their own workers without much of a fear in the world that justice will be done.

America, what a country!

Last night at a Citizen Wealth event at SEIU 1199 in Baltimore a wage inspector for the State of Maryland asked me what did I know about innovative programs in other states being undertaken to enforce labor laws.  I had to answer essentially, “nothing, brother,” you are one of the few and not the many.  Today’s highlights on this report indicate that he is even more alone that I feared.