by Mark Karlin
November25, 2010 from BuzzFlash
Corporate profits in the US hit their highest in history in the third quarter of 2010, according to The New York Times (NYT). Meanwhile, in Washington, Republicans and conservative Democrats prepare to leave unemployed Americans without benefits at the same time that they will try to extend hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthy.
If there appears to be a disconnect here, there is. No longer is the increased profitability of corporations - now often really global companies that happen to be incorporated in the US - tied to a decrease in unemployment in America.
Corporate profitability is now often due to a shuffling of financial papers and a growth in jobs overseas, not on the homefront. It is also tied to Wall Street gambling, greed and corruption, as Charles Ferguson compellingly reveals in his new documentary, "Inside Job."
BuzzFlash interviewed Ferguson in 2007 about his equally eye-opening first film "No End in Sight." That movie documented the staggering incompetence of the Bush administration in overseeing post-invasion Iraq.
In "Inside Job," Ferguson methodically peels away the people, motives and deregulated strategies that led to the near collapse of the American economy. Like "No End in Sight," the individuals and firms responsible for betraying average American citizens, in this case through financial improprieties, were not held responsible. In fact, many of them - from the secretary of the treasury on down - are guiding the Obama economic policies and doing favors for the same financial firms that caused such ruinous damage (and for which many of them have worked.)
Meanwhile, as the Scrooges in Washington are prepared to allow millions of Americans to go without financial support during the holidays, Wall Street, according to The NYT, is celebrating: "But when it comes to personal indulgences, there are signs that the wallets are beginning to open up. Traders and executives say that jobs seem much more secure. Businesses whose fortunes ebb and flow with the financial markets are thriving again."
"Wall Street is back spending as much if not more than before," said one person quoted by The NYT.
Over the past three decades, the opulent, gluttonous fortunes of Wall Street have become largely untethered from the food pantry anxieties of Main Street.
