I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
In the recent bailout of U.S. financial institutions, JP Morgan Chase was given $25 billion by us, the American tax-payers. The hope, at least as it was expressed to us by our legislators, was that with this money the company would begin making loans, returning things to normal. According to New York Times reporter Joe Nocera, however, that wasn’t necessarily the intention of the leadership at Chase.
According to Nocera, who sat in on a JP Morgan Chase conference call yesterday without the knowledge of participating executives, the company has no intention of using the bailout money given to them in order to start making new loans. Their plan is to use the funds instead to acquire other banks.
And that’s not the worst of the news today. According to Time, a considerable portion of the money given to financial institutions will, despite the complaints of the American people, be spent on executive bonuses. Here’s a clip:
…Uncle Sam has a new name on Wall Street — Sugar Daddy. Bonuses for investment bankers and traders are projected to fall by 40% this year. But analysts, compensation consultants and recruiters say the drop would be much more severe, perhaps as much as 70%, had it not been for the government’s efforts to prop up the financial firms. “Year-end pay on Wall Street will be higher than it would have been had it not been for the government and mergers,” says Alan Johnson, a leading compensation consultant. “You would expect it to be down much more.”
Johnson predicts the average managing director at an investment bank, a title typically earned around eight years on the job, will receive a bonus of $625,000. That’s down from nearly $1.1 million last year, but it is still 15 times the income of the average American household. Top bankers could receive as much as $1 million. Even a bond trader just out of business school could see his or her bank account enriched by as much as $170,000 this Christmas. “The firms have had an extremely difficult year,” says Joan Zimmerman, a Wall Street career coach. “But they can’t afford to lose talent either”…
So, how does that make you feel, America?
How do you like knowing that not only you, but your kids and your unborn grandkids are going into debt so that the incompetent managing directors of failing investment banks can take home Christmas bonuses of $625,000? And that’s in addition to their regular pay.
And how do you feel about the fact that the money that’s left after pay and bonuses won’t be put into circulation as it was intended, but, instead, used by the company to facilitate their growth through acquisition?
Feel like rioting yet?
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