According to a new report, bankers are writing off their massive bonuses, forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for their disgusting largesse. The Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcription of the above video:
It’s no secret that the Wall Street bankers have, for years, been scamming the American public, but recently a report by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC came out and told us just how bad the American public is getting screwed. We’re not just getting screwed on these horrible deals and these risky gambles that the banks are making. No, no, no. We’re getting screwed in how much they’re paying their executives, because as it turns out, there is this little tax loophole that allows the big banks to write off performance-based bonuses to CEOs and other executives within the company.
Now, immediately after the bailout, and until they had paid their bailout money back, the big banks were not allowed to issue these massive performance-based bonuses. However, starting in the year 2012, they began to issue these bonuses again, and from 2012 to 2015, they spent more than $2 billion in giveaways to their own executives. That $2 billion was all written off on their taxes, which means that we, the federal taxpayers, helped to subsidize CEO excess. There is not other way to describe that. We paid their bonuses for continuing to screw over the American public. I mean, they screwed us over, and we had to pay their bonuses for doing that.
I mean, this is the most ass-backwards system that you could possibly imagine. None of this makes any sense whatsoever. Why? Why in God’s name would anyone think that it’s a good idea to allow a company to write off a $40 million bonus to their CEO? If they want to give a guy $40 million, or $10 million, or even $1 million, that’s their choice, but they’re going to live with the consequences of that, in that it won’t be paid as dividends to shareholders. You can’t stick that bill on the American taxpayers and expect us to say, “Oh, well. We’re just going to go along just fine. Don’t worry about us.”
No, and to be honest, this is another reason why Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street transcripts are still such a big damn deal, even though nobody’s talking about them anymore. These people are screwing us over at every turn. They’re screwing us over when they make these risky gambles to come up with short-term profits and long-term losses that only harm the consumers. They’re screwing us over when they pay their taxes, or I should say, don’t pay their taxes every year. That’s the problem here. Hillary Clinton is in bed with the big banks. Donald Trump is in bed with the big banks, regardless of what he says. Almost every Senator and House member in Washington is in bed with these guys. This is not a democrat or a republican thing. This is a government thing. The whole damn system is in bed with these Wall Street bankers, and all these banks want to do is take your money and not give it back.
