From: Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen: Five years ago, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. Instantly and inevitably, the house of cards otherwise known as Wall Street collapsed. But after getting bailed out by the American taxpayers, Wall Street is doing just fine. The people of Main Street? Not so much. SOME NUMBERS TO THINK ABOUT: $22,000,000,000,000 - amount the crash cost the U.S. economy $69,478.88 - amount each U.S. citizen would get if that amount were divided equally to each citizen $6,400,000,000,000 - assets of the four biggest banks in America when they were “too big to fail:” JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wachovia /Wells Fargo $7,800,000,000,000 - Assets of those four banks today 63 - number of former Lehman Brothers employees identified by a bankruptcy examiner as being aware of an accounting scheme Lehman used to mask its true finances 47 - number who are employed in senior financial services positions today: 47 25 - number of banks responsible for the bulk of risky sub-prime loans leading up to the 2008 crash that are back in the mortgage business 25 – number of those banks that are back in the mortgage business 9 in 10 - chances that an American voter thinks that regulating financial products and services is “important” or “very important” 8 in 10 - chances that an American knows the Earth orbits the sun $487,000,000A- aount spent in 2012 by Wall Street and the finance industry behemoths to lobby for a roll back, water down and weasel out of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act 2,429 - number of registered financial industry lobbyists in 2012 7 - number of lawsuits filed as of April 2013 by Eugene Scalia, son of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, to hold up implementation of Dodd-Frank rules on legal technicalities 1 - rank of finance industry among all corporate election spending by sector in 2011 and 2012 $664,000,000 - amount the industry gave to political candidates in 2011 and 2012 every 80 minutes - rate at which JPMorgan Chase revenues, the largest bank in the U.S., matched Public Citizen’s operating expenses for the entire year Undeniably, these numbers are shocking, infuriating, damning. That’s why it is vitally important that every citizen unite to raise hell with politicians and greedy corporations that created and have perpetrated the economic mess the U.S. and the world are currently experiencing! If we don’t, the future is bleak indeed.
Posted on: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 20:22:32 +0000
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