Forget federal pay czar. No cossacks here.
We’ve crossed over from regulatory overreach to overt fascism with a government official decreeing that BofA CEO Ken Lewis shall not receive any compensation for his work this year.
Are the banks private entities or not? That we even must ask such a question clues us in that fascism — the melding of government and corporate powers in one all-powerful oligarchy which permits private property and for-profit ventures only to the extent that they serve State ends — is now the de facto operating system of the financial sector. And perhaps soon the entire economy.
In fact, the evidence is that the big money center banks — BofA, Wells/Wachovia, Citigroup certainly — are functioning as government sponsored enterprises much like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did before the crash. They make trades and deals, but only ones which fit a narrow, government-defined mission, always subject to regulatory review and veto, and with the full backing of the Treasury and Federal Reserve to erase mistakes.
Earnings? How and why do bank earnings enter into this? Woe to investors who are just starting to figure this out, who thought there was a “recovery” in the “banking sector.”
There is no recovery. There is no banking sector. Just a government printing money and deciding who gets it — or else.
Bonus Observation: Check out a critic of the federal pay czar’s action against Lewis: “This is not just a matter of, ‘This is for the good of the company or the good of the nation,’ ” said analyst Nancy Bush of NAB Research. Bush says it is a punitive action directed at Lewis personally. But the good of the nation might justify stripping a man of all income. When does the good of the nation justify stamping their foreheads with little triangles or stars?
