Harvey Column - Page 8 - Represent Consumers

Administration still won't rein in lavish pay schemes

Imagine if you could report the value of your work on your tax return, rather than your actual income. At the end of the year, you’d issue yourself a W2 or a 1099 based on a comparison of how other people who did the same kind of work valued their efforts. The lower the worth you put on your work, the lower your taxes. Let’s just say the IRS wouldn’t be too happy with a system that encouraged low-balling.

Wall Street bankers were able to arrange an equally self-serving compensation system for themselves - and they got away with it.

Happy birthday bailout!

In a week, the nation will celebrate the one-year anniversary of Wall Street’s collapse.

For most, it won’t be a festive occasion. A whopping 16% of Americans able to work are unemployed or are working fewer hours than they want. Spending is way down because people are scared and many are unable to borrow – lines of credit have been slashed and credit card interest rates are skyrocketing. Since household spending amounts to at least 30% of the nation’s economic activity, this has had a devastating ripple effect on the economy.

Harvey Column / TARP - 09/16/2009

Profiting While On the Taxpayer Teat

Hearing that the banks they bailed out are now “making a profit” is one of the insults taxpayers are reckoning with these days.

Bank of America recently announced $2.4 billion in second quarter profits – but still hasn’t paid back the $45 billion bailout money it got less than a year ago. Citigroup trumpeted $3 billion in profits while it too owes American taxpayers $45 billion.

Bank of America (BoA) / Harvey Column - 08/28/2009

The Summer of Our Discontent

There’s been a lot of speculation that the Town Hall confrontations over health care reform have been generated by political operatives enlisted by politicians and other partisans who are in the pockets of the insurance and medical industries.

Harvey Column / Outrage - 08/26/2009