Money, its a crime.

posted by The Sailor @ 6:53 PM Permalink

Even in Crisis, Banks Dig In for Fight Against Rules

As the financial crisis entered one of its darkest phases in October, a handful of the nation's largest banks began holding daily telephone sessions. Murmurs were already emanating from Washington about the need for a wide-ranging regulatory overhaul, and Wall Street executives girded for a fight.
[...]
The nine biggest participants in the derivatives market - including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America - created a lobbying organization, the CDS Dealers Consortium, on Nov. 13, a month after five of its members accepted federal bailout money.
[...]
Through political action committees and their own employees, securities and investment firms gave $152 million in political contributions from 2007 to 2008, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission data.

The top five companies - Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Credit Suisse - gave $22.7 million and spent more than $25 million combined on lobbying activities in that period, according to election data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The banksters are spending OUR money to lobby against OUR knowing how OUR money is spent. The rich really are different, they have more money.

Well jeez, I guess that's OK seeing as how it's not like they screwed up the whole economy ... oh, wait a minute, they did screw up the world's economy because of their greed! So at a time when states are gutting police, education and firefighting budgets these folks think a wee bit of oversight is egregious.

F**k'em and may they burn in hell.

Labels: banksters, economic disparity, Economy