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Every now and then, I come across a charitable cause that really touches my heart. I want to share one with you now and urge you to respond with all the generosity it merits. The appeal appeared in a New York Times op-ed under this compelling headline: “Wall Street Needs Help.”
That touched my heart like a coronary thrombosis! But then I thought, maybe the writer means that Wall Street needs psychiatric help to overcome its psychotic greed. Unfortunately, no, the head of something called the Partnership for New York City – led by bankers and CEOs – is actually pleading that “the government must step up” to help JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America and other Wall Street Baronies, which she says are suffering the loss of thousands of finance jobs.
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She wails that Wall Street’s role as “an elite financial marketplace” is endangered, because Great Britain provides more help to its big banks than our government provides for ours. Surely, I thought, this is a put-on, maybe a satirical reprint from The Onion. But, no – her group wants tax incentives to help poor financial powers retain bankers, plus a lower corporate tax rate, looser bank regulations, relief from rising rents, protection from cyber attacks, and much, much, more.
Has no one told her about the trillions of public dollars Wall Street is still getting from government bailouts and subsidies? How odd that bankers would think the hard-hit public would be sympathetic to their appeal for more aid from the Big Bad Government, which bankers routinely demonize for providing “handouts” to the poor.
As these banksters keep telling poor people, the unemployed, and others in real need, Wall Street should pull itself up by its own bootstraps. And if the banks want aid, let them go the Little Sisters of the Poor for canned beans and used clothing.
“Wall Street Needs Help,” www.nytimes.com, June 15, 2015.