Wall Street By the Numbers
December 03, 2009
Across the country this holiday season, Main Street is being starved while Ebenezer Scrooge and his Wall Street friends are feasting.
Just a year after our economy plunged to terrifying depths, the financial tycoons who caused the crash are reaping enormous wealth as a result. They are receiving extraordinary bonuses as 10.2% of Americans are unemployed, states are being forced to cut critical services and 8.1 million homes are at high risk of foreclosure.
David Weidner at MarketWatch just released a devastating list of facts and figures contrasting those who are starving with those who are feasting this season. Here are a few lines (check out the whole thing):
- Wall Street bonus pool estimate for 2009: $140 billion
- Combined budget deficit estimate for 50 states in 2010: $142 billion (Read this blog post on Wall Street bonuses.)
- Average bonus at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS): $550,000
- U.S. median income: $50,740
- Total bailout funds committed by the U.S. government and Federal Reserve to Wall Street and auto industry: $1.1 trillion
- Cash committed to helping homeowners refinance mortgages under the Making Home Affordable act: $50 billion
- Number of mortgages that are eligible to be modified by Bank of America: 990,628
- Total mortgages eligible for modifications actually modified by B. of A. through Nov. 10: 136,994
- Number of bank lobbyists in Washington: 2,370
- Amount spent by financial industry lobbyists this year through Oct. 26: $334 million
At this critical time in our nation’s economy it is unacceptable for Wall Street to grow richer because of a problem they caused and we all sacrificed to fix. We know exactly who deserves to get coal in their stockings this Christmas.
