The crass behaviour of Britain’s financial aristocracy rivals the last of the Bourbons. Marie Antoinette famously patronised the Parisian mob with her ‘let them eat cake’, while dining in luxury in the Tuileries.
The City bankers who ruined their banks but have been kept in employment by the taxpayer now demand we pay them their bonuses to maintain the aristocratic lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. They know no shame and take no blame. They are lucky the British have no guillotines in stock.
Vince Cable: 'Bring back the guillotine...for bankers'
N.Y.C. so costly you need to earn six figures to make middle class
A new report shows just how ugly — and expensive — New York City can be, especially for the middle class, squeezed by skyrocketing living costs and stagnant wages.
Among the findings:
CEOs, Bankers Used Corporate Credit Cards for Sex, Says New York Madam
Wall street lawyers, investment bankers, CEOs and media executives often used corporate credit cards to pay for $2,000 an hour prostitutes, according to the madam who ran one of New York's biggest and most expensive escort services until it was busted last year.
"Some of these guys, I was invoicing on corporate credit cards," she said. "I was writing up monthly bills for computer consulting, construction expenses, all of these things, I was invoicing them monthly so they could get it by their accountants," Davis said.
TARP recipients paid out $114 million for politicking
The struggling companies whose freewheeling business practices have contributed to the country's economic woes are getting a lucrative return on at least one of their investments. Beneficiaries of the $700 billion bailout package in the finance and automotive industries have spent a total of $114.2 million on lobbying in the past year and contributions toward the 2008 election, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has found. The companies' political activities have, in part, yielded them $305.2 billion from the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), an extraordinary return of 267,208 percent.
IBM Offers To Move Laid Off Workers To India
Under a program called Project Match, IBM will help workers laid off from domestic sites obtain travel and visa assistance for countries in which Big Blue has openings. Mostly that's developing markets like India, China, and Brazil.
"IBM has established Project Match to help you locate potential job opportunities in growth markets where your skills are in demand," IBM says in an internal notice on the initiative. "Should you accept a position in one of these countries, IBM offers financial assistance to offset moving costs, provides immigration support, such as visa assistance, and other support to help ease the transition of an international move."
VIDEO: Jobless Rate Full 10% Higher Than Reported
John Williams, Founder of Shadow Government Statistics, calculates that the jobless rate is a full l0 percent higher than the government is reporting. He also discusses the news Monday morning that American companies (including Sprint, Home Depot) are cutting about 43,000 jobs.
Americans receiving jobless benefits hits record
The Labor Department reported that the number of Americans continuing to claim unemployment insurance for the week ending Jan. 17 was a seasonally adjusted 4.78 million, the highest on records dating back to 1967. That's an increase of 159,000 from the previous week and worse than economists' expectations of 4.65 million.
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