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How Big Banks Fleece You
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While the government bails out big banks, the big banks squeeze the little guy. The Daily Beast’s Nomi Prins calculates how individual banking fees fund their risky activity.
Too big to fail means big enough to screw taxpayers twice.
That’s my conclusion after a few weeks of combing through FDIC databases, trying to calculate the price to consumers following the decade of bank consolidation—following the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act—that reached a government-sponsored peak during last fall’s economic crisis. As banks keep merging, so does their share of our deposits. In 1998, the five largest U.S. commercial banks held 19 percent of total domestic deposits. In 2004, they held 27 percent. And since the Federal Reserve brokered marriages of the largest banks last fall, it is now 40 percent.
Not only do big banks charge higher service fees for the luxury of taking your checking deposits and using them as capital for other ventures, but the interest they provide is comparatively abysmal.
In layman’s terms, this means that the biggest banks enjoy increasingly captive power over their customers—the opposite of competition in the so-called free markets. That dominance provides the inner-circle banks every incentive to do everything they can to profit from their newly acquired customers (and old standby ones). After all, our deposits, plus fees and charges, represent the highest quality of real money for them to work with. That’s aside from the backing we’ve involuntarily provided through various federal sustenance programs.
Captive customers are very lucrative. Nearly three-quarters of banks’ total service charges of $34.3 billion in 2008 came from overdraft or NSF (not sufficient funds) fees.
That’s our money. It’s not like banks don’t require payment for their services in order to sustain them, but the problem with the biggest banks is that they extort disproportionate sums from customers relative to the smaller banks, in almost every way.
In general, not only do big banks charge higher service fees for the luxury of taking your checking deposits and using them as capital for other ventures, but the interest they provide on these, and savings accounts, are comparatively abysmal relative to smaller banks. Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and J.P. Morgan Chase don’t even make the top 25 in highest savings interest rates provided.
Yet the rates bigger banks charge to lend money are higher than smaller ones. Big banks like Wells Fargo charge an average annual rate of 14.2 percent for its credit cards, Citibank (the consumer-banking arm of Citigroup) charges an average of 15.99 percent, whereas smaller banks like First Command Bank or CNB Bank charge just 4.5 and 5.25 percent, respectively.
• Jeff Madrick: Why Washington Won’t Prevent Another MeltdownThough banks aren’t compelled to disclose how much of their profit comes from fees, the Service Employees International Union has done some good research in this area. Based on their research, J.P. Morgan Chase’s bank fees comprised 71 percent of its profit for the first half of 2009, or $3.45 billion. Citigroup earned $326 million in service and credit-card fees, or 95 percent of its profit for the same period. Bank of America made $5.26 billion in bank account fees, 70 percent of its profit. Much of the rest of their profit came from trading revenue, predicated on risk-taking on the back of capital raised either through federal support, or using our deposits as collateral on which to lend or borrow.
Overdraft charges are administered not only to people who don’t have enough money in their accounts to pay their bills, but also to customers who may keep enough money in their savings account, but get slapped for not transferring it at the appropriate moment to their meager-interest-rate checking account.
Media and congressional noise about these egregious practices prompted Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) to unveil the Fairness and Accountability in Receiving Overdraft Coverage Act, which would force banks to rethink them. Among other suggestions, Dodd’s act requires banks to gain customers’ "opt-in" approval for their overdraft programs. Less than a week after Dodd announced drafting the legislation, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo responded by voluntarily announcing changes to their overdraft programs—in the hope of thwarting Dodd from going through with it, but that didn’t work.
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How Rich People Smoke Pot
Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
Obama's Half-Baked Bank Reform
Nomi Prins is author of It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street (Wiley, September, 2009). Before becoming a journalist, she worked on Wall Street as a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and running the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London.
Bernanke in Denial
Nomi Prins is author of It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street (Wiley, September, 2009). Before becoming a journalist, she worked on Wall Street as a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and running the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London.
Bring Back That Wall!
Nomi Prins is author of It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street (Wiley, September, 2009). Before becoming a journalist, she worked on Wall Street as a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and running the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London.
octavio
Nov/2/2009/1:48 A.M.
Not to long ago,George W.Bush made a deal with the banks.
He told the banks: In exchange for your campaign contribu-
tions ( bribes ) I allow you to screw the USA banking custo-
mers as much as you want.
He did it.George W.Bush gave the banks every
thing they wanted.George W.Bush became the banks' s whore
for many years.
These crooks are still around.We need to prosecute Bush/Cheney as soon as possible.
Banks are like lawyers.First they will steal your
money.Second they will suck your blood.
The government needs to stop giving money and
going to the rescue of these crooks.Let them fail.We need to clean house,we need to start with the three credit bureaus.
These credit bureaus are also the banks whores,they had
ben screwing the taxpayers for years.
GPatton
It was WJC who signed the 1999 law that started this era of banksterism in the US. He bent over for Wall St. in order to get their support; he needed it to beat the rap for sodomizing an intern, and lying about it. He's responsible for the debacle, as is Alan Greenspan whom WJC re-appointed; W comes in a (very distant) third. Why it's taken the media so long to connect the dots, I don't understand. George Patton
connie47
WJC signed the bill authored by Senate by Phil Gramm (Republican of Texas) and in the House of Representatives by Jim Leach (R-Iowa). Telling only half the story is dishonest.
co-intheknow
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill was so fully supported by the right that it had a veto-proof majority vote; Clinton didn't have an option.
So, Patton, you're only partially correct or your selectively lying to make the story seem like it's all Clinton's fault.
candyman101
Really, because if memory serves me correctly the 106th Congress was a 55-45 split in the Senate (R to D) and 227-221 (R to D) in the House. So explain how Clinton didn't have a veto option (assuming all "D's" would have been against this bill)?
DanKenton
Sodomy? Only a Wal-Mart shopping chrisitian would refer to WJC's encounter with Lewinsky as sodomy.
numonk
Oral sex is not sodomizing.
co-intheknow
@candyman101: I'm sure you're too lazy to do the research, so here's a healthy snip for you, with voting counts and how it ended up being signed...again, with near veto-proof counts.
The House passed its version of the Financial Services Act of 1999 on July 1st by a bipartisan vote of 343-86 (|Republicans 205-16; Democrats 138-69; Independent/Socialist 0-1),[3] [4] [5] two months after the Senate had already passed its version of the bill on May 6th by a much-narrower 54-44 vote along basically-partisan lines (53 Republicans and one Democrat in favor; 44 Democrats opposed).[6] [7] [8] [9]
When the two chambers could not agree on a joint version of the bill, the House voted on July 30th by a vote of 241-132 (R 58-131; D 182-1; Ind. 1-0) to instruct its negotiators to work for a law which ensured that consumers enjoyed medical and financial privacy as well as "robust competition and equal and non-discriminatory access to financial services and economic opportunities in their communities" (i.e., protection against exclusionary redlining).[10]
The bill then moved to a joint conference committee to work out the differences between the Senate and House versions. Democrats agreed to support the bill after Republicans agreed to strengthen provisions of the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act and address certain privacy concerns; the conference committee then finished its work by the beginning of November.[8] [11] On November 4th, the final bill resolving the differences was passed by the Senate 90-8,[12] [13] and by the House 362-57.[14] [15] This legislation (whose voting margins, if repeated, would easily have overcome any Presidential veto) was signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999.[16]
AlanD2
GPatton: As connie47 told you, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 was a Republican bill. From Wikipedia:
"The bill that ultimately repealed the Act was introduced in the Senate by Phil Gramm (Republican of Texas) and in the House of Representatives by Jim Leach (R-Iowa) in 1999. The bills were passed by a Republican majority, basically following party lines by a 54-44 vote in the Senate and by a bi-partisan 343-86 vote in the House of Representatives. After passing both the Senate and House the bill was moved to a conference committee to work out the differences between the Senate and House versions. The final bill resolving the differences was passed in the Senate 90-8 (one not voting) and in the House: 362-57 (15 not voting). The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999."
As you have tried to blame this on Clinton, I will point out that the final House and Senate votes were sufficient to override a Clinton veto, so there was no reason for him not to sign the bill.
candyman101
co-intheknow: so what i read from your post, the final version of the bill was a compromise. And since the R's didn't have a super-majority at the time, the reason Bill couldn't veto the bill had to be a result of D support in Congress? And in rereading my post, what about it is incorrect? And by the way, posting straight from wikipedia doesn't qualify as research either.
leprechaun1230
Octavio, I agree completely. I honestly think that banks have forgotten how to make a profit as banks are supposed to, through lending, banking services, etc. When such a huge proportion of their profits come from fees, something is wrong at the heart of banking practices.
They have become too used to gambling as though they were at a casino with our money, that they know nothing else.
I'd love for the government to break these giant banks up to restore true competition to the marketplace. As long as the big banks are so big, they can just drive the little guys out of business, slowly and surely.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
bgeasyas123
I think we can all agree that you need to take this stuff elsewhere. No one wants to read your attempts to implant entire blogs into the comments of other articles. You constantly put your novels into these postings, why? It is just a nusance.
MaCaCa
please stop with this shit.
oliverckerr
It is the only solution out there . . . well here. We apply the concept of the "Public Option" to our matured habit of using plastic cards for doing business via the instantaneous electronic withdraw of our own private funds, or someone else's funds, which we agree to repay in a timely fashion.
The banks simply rip off the consumers, because we all use these cards, for instant debit or long term credit, and because they pay off the congress people with "dough nations" to the Members' never ending campaigns for reelection, a sensible solution cannot even be talked about.
The solution to that is to hold "our" own independent political convention, a major element in our gathering, besides nominating "our" candidates for public office, to DUMP THE 535 / THE 535 MUST GO (potential bumper stickers)
Relative to putting "Uncle Sam Shazam" into law and bringing about the migration of billions of dollars in private debt into the public's domain, belonging to all, the migration financed by a new financial instrument, The Uncle Sam Shazam Savings Bond, (which we would be presenting to the banks, in lieu of cash), and then applying the interest on all of these billions of dollars in private consumer debt to our public debt which we owe to other countries, besides our Social Security fund which these congress people have been raping for years, this plan - this concept is worth a Nobel Prize in economics, because we will as a nation, be able to pay our bills and again lead the world instead of becoming a secondary lender.
The fascist confuses reality!
"I think we can all agree" is one of those typical fascist stabs. I think we can all agree that there aren't any solutions out there, other than what is above, and I think we can all agree that we don't all agree. You speak for yourself.
"We" are the readers, not the fascist posters of which there are more than a few.
The screen name "Ma CaCa" is truly a cheap fascist buzz word shot at anyone whose skin might have a pigment and whose parents migrated to our great melting pot.
Finally, on the issue of my novel approach to solving our prob limbs, every browser has a slider, so you ought to scroll past what is too intelligent for you to absorb.
Give my best to your compatriots, the minions of j. edgarina, the fascist cross dressing pervert of dirt who did all in his power to destroy the First Amendment Rights of the American people.
michaelslevinson.com
sophia5
octavio -
I agree they (banks) should be allowed to fail.
However, time for a wake up call.
Both Republicans . . . AND . . . Democrats . . . are bought off.
Time to stop looking through Far Left or Far Right Glasses.
numonk
Goes back a little further buddy.
And, unfortunately, YOUR future and MY future were already sold to these banks, so we have some vested interest on getting a few cents back on the dollar from these aptly-titled 'crooks'.
Until then, have a little respect for your local hard drug dealers, loan sharks, AND banks as they are keeping our economy moving in a way that those of us with time to post here can benefit from.
floridabob
connie47: You're implying that a Republican would be lying, are you?
GPatton
Ladies and Gentlemen: Intheno, etc.: WJC didn't have an option because of his own actions. That's the whole, sad story. George Patton
DocHumboldt
"What" actions? You're just pointing and saying: "Hey! Look over there!"
MaCaCa
You are an absolute idiot GP
co-intheknow
Why not do the research yourself, GP. I mean if you're smart enough to spout all of the talking points you so fastidiously 'researched', then I'm sure you can google the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and find out what the hell it really says.
I've posted some info above as has AlanD2 - so either you can't read or you are too thick to be able to comprehend what actually happened.
Clinton didn't get 'blown' into signing the Act but it's nice that a blowjob is all you can remember of his presidency. God, you righties can't get away from other folks' sex lives, can you?
sophia5
" the government bails out big banks "
Beg to differ.
Seems the Working People of America bail out the Big Banks.
Seems the Government gets it's money from the Taxpayers, unless you consider them PRINTING Money, and
doesn't printing devalue the Dollar ?
philosopher8
Thank you Ms. Prins for your illumination of the ditch we Americans are currently stuck in. This climate of corporate profits, pleasing shareholders, and pumping up #'s through any means possible (fee's vs. true banking) is literally destrouing our society as evidenced by what is going on all around us today.
Foreclosure, unemployment, debt collection crooks, crazy APR's, even crazier fees, bailouts, bonuses and an American spread sheet that reads like a 4th world nation.
Most everyday folks do not know the extent to which our supposed leaders in business are robbing us without a gun, and destroying our way of life in the name of their bottom line.
Many commenters here are rabidly blaming WJC, W and the like. This is typicalof the way society is today. Lots of talk, opinion, editorial and all the while so many families and kids are suffering terribly.
So much fraud within the Wall Street firms, banks, communications, oil, energy markets in the last few years. When does someone stand up and say that there are crooks amongst us disguised as bankers, money managers, mortgage brokers and the like. President Obama was brilliant when discussing businesses that are registered abroad. When he said "19,000 American businesses are supposedly located in that one building abroad. Either that is one giant building, or something is wrong here". Brilliant.
ONly the little guy gets hurt when these people in positions of power abuse their reach and begin to covet others money.
Let me remind all of us that there are probably only about 500,000 people in this country pulling down obscene amounts of money based on technicalities, lawyers and lobbyists, whil the other 290 odd million of us struggle. And these days the struggle includes foreclosure, financial ruin and worse.
People are not standing up for their rights to live and work in this country. We must all revot and let these people who are destroying our way of life know that it is unacceptable. I guess we are all so busy juggling bills, surfing the net, twittering and playing around on facebook to think about the serious issues we face and the threat our way of life is confronting. Wake up America!!!
djanimaequeen
Bravo!
djanimaequeen
Nomi I like you. You hit the nail on the head. What's disturbing is that these banks are fleecing the people who need the money the most: the working poor who live paycheck to paycheck. I have a friend who in one year was charged $1900 in bank fees by BofA. Another friend didn't believe me when I told her how they hold deposits to maximize on bank fees: They will hold your paychack then cash checks that were written AFTER you deposited money so they can charge you a $30 overdraft fee (they use the BS excuse that the funds were not available). When she had a child and became one of the working poor, she soon learned the truth of their shoddy business practices.
CONSUMERS! Stop wasting your hard earned money with these crooks! Take your money to a local credit union!!
arwest
the majority of us cannot use credit unions because we move around, don't want to carry a lot of cash, and need the accessibility of atms, without the charge. banks with their many locations provide this.
now posters, let's try something new. how about a solution instead of constant condemnation of who is responsible. if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. since credit unions are not viable, what else are your suggestions? i get so tired of just seeing posters partisan witch all the time. you obviously have brains. use them.
ExiledintheUSA
Wasn't the original legislation put in place for a reason? As checks and balances? What makes us think we don't need those protections? By now, people should be aware that any attempt to "overturn" a previous law is a cause for concern. Nowhere is that more true than when the law being overturned is the Constitution. Maybe, just maybe, we'll pay better attention next time (though that's doubtful).
octavio
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------
(1) oliverckerr needs to be hang by the toenails in the main
door frame of the White House.
(2) philosopher8's comment is excellent.He is telling every-
body that the tax payers must revolt,because the US is
going down the drain.A revolution means that we the
taxpayers need to start prosecuting the crooks ( the hospi-
tals CEO's,the banking industry CEO's,the lobbysts and
the rest of the crooks and criminals like Bush/Cheney et
cetera ).
(3) Can somebody tell me if we can do this revolution
through the voting process only? or do we have to do it
the old phasion way -----> throwing nuclear bombs to the
wrong doers?
------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------
ExiledintheUSA
When Government becomes destructive of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, it is the right of the people, to alter or abolish it, to institute new government... (That pesky ol' Declaration of Independence.)
Bluefish
Banks VS Bailout, or was that tailout.? we're getting screwed from both ends burning.? where were the regulators.? should they be bonus's for the lookouts.? if there were would we be here now.? and as for that totally scandalous Insurance trade dubbed Credit Default Swaps cutting a gapping hole in the side of the system and bleeding 24/7.! this was a regulated car crash, betting on failure.! this is quite simply criminal, and they didn't have to register any bets.? WTF.! you know if you changed the title of CDR to Oceans 11.?
GetaClu
EVERYONE sold us out on the Glass-Steagall Act getting repealed. Knowing the exact count of who voted is not important, what is important is that they put it back before America Does Understand what our politicians did by guaranteeing that the conflicts of interest that the Glass-Steagall were to prevent (as a result of the Bank Failures during the Great Depression), was un-done and in less than 2 yrs after they allowed the banks to merge their interest with Wall Street firms, the entire banking system fell AGAIN for the EXACT SAME REASONS! (Only Rail Road Stocks were replaced with Dot-Com Stocks) Understanding why we had it and why it needs to be reacted, that is IMPORTANT!
Now, by allowing the Wall Street Firms to make markets in their Bank's own paper as their parent company then goes to the Federal Reserve for additional Leverage and then (as IF Wall Street isn't Greedy Enough...), and then they increased the Stock Margins from 50% to 75% to further increase their risk? Then we throw NEW MONEY (after they poke all those holes in the dam) to stop the money losses with money as corks in the dam? No matter how much money you give those banks they will do it again and again and again! "You can't manage larceny as if it's an institutional program to support bonds!"
To facilitate this cluster fuss, the Fed pushed the Fed rate below 1.8% (for 7 yrs), so the Banks would be able to re-capitalize the losses they never really disclosed as a result of the crash (MELTDOWN) of 2001. 911 took the U.S. into WAR, bank loss never came forward and nobody spoke of what happened. They just flushed the New Cheap Money through the system to get as much fast interest income out asap.
The best is now we learn that that over 70% of all bank profits are actually generated from "Late fees and NSF fees!" That means that all those impressive buildings supporting all those impressive Banker's wearing expensive suits, riding in Limos and eating "Power Lunches" (all that Executive Brainpower, working in fancy offices) and at the end of the day, we find out that Earned Interest and Profits from Managing Wealth, etc. accounted for less than 30% of Bank Profits! Turns out, over 70% of the bank Profits came from allowing mismanaged accts to remain mismanaged! All those Hundreds of Billions of Dollars and the best educated financial skills together with the U.S. bailout and their best idea is, "Allow people to mismanage their accts so we can rely on the NSF Charges to float the entire banking system."
Slogan! The American Banking System: "We not only Legislate Ignorance, We Bank on IT!"
periscope
Banks, brokerage firms and assorted other financial institutions should serve the public and promote the general welfare or they create severe societal problems, including middle-class crushing recessions.
The irony is that these same institutions use the money they are allowed to make - to buy Congress, and the presidents like Bushboy, to promote their own selfish, profiteering regardless of the damage it does to the country.
In recent years we have seen Phil Gramm, who as a Republican Senator was on the dole to the banking industry (and still is), push for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which has led to the current banking crisis.
We also saw Bushboy and the Republican Party act in complicity with the Credit Card industry (owned by the banks), so that consumers were no longer protected by personal bankruptcy laws, and could be pursued for life by the CC industry to collect their usurious interest rates and their outrageously high and hidden fees.
American consumers have been sold-out by the Republican Party on numerous occasions. The only wonder is when they will figure it out?
FatFreddy
Good article, but there are a few things you left out that would have helped drive your point. The four biggest banks hold 40% of all deposits. They also hold 50% (and climbing) of all assets. There are roughly 8100 banks in this country. Check the Independent Community Bankers of America's (ICBA) website.
"Overdraft" is no longer a bounced check.It is a service. The big banks "allow" consumers to overdraw their accounts with their ATM debit cards. Small banks do not. Here's a recent article from the ICBA:
http://www.icba.org/news/newsreleasedetail.cfm?ItemNumber=64221&sn.ItemN umber=1733
The sad thing is, most people understand this and do it willingly. For the same reasons they get small secured loans on personal property (pawn shops), title loans, payday loans, and anticipated tax refund loans. Banks charge high fees because many banks are regulated by state's usury laws (which only applies to the interest rate, not fees). Credit card companies bypass state usury laws by setting up in states like Delaware and South Dakota; states with no usury laws. We can't really blame banks for trying to get in on the action. The action is consumer driven. We can, however, blame the Federal government for allowing the loopholes in State's rights to regulate banking practices.
There's more. I wish there was a "preview button".
FatFreddy
There are some problems with the FDIC. Banks that are "too big too fail" are really banks that are too big to be taken over by the FDIC. That is most likely to change with the new regulations being proposed. Many of the banks that failed were sold by the FDIC lock, stock and barrel to larger banks. There was no splitting up of the assets to be sold at "fire sale" prices to smaller banks.
CIT did receive 2.3 in TARP money. A few months ago they asked for more and were flatly denied. CIT was forced into a deal with Goldman Sucks. Included in the deal was a provision that if CIT were to go into bankruptcy, GS would get 1 billion off the top. Plus, GS made several side deals to hedge their exposure with credit default swaps. Yeah, remember those things. Still being sold. It was estimated that GS was so heavily hedged that they would actually make a profit with CIT's bankruptcy. That's really a shitty way to do business.
FatFreddy
The biggest cause of this financial crisis (and there were many), was the practice of fractional reserve banking gone amok. Banks normally lend at a ratio of 9 or 10:1 (for every dollar in assets, they loan 10). Recently, however, many banks were at 30:1, some as high as 60:1, and in the case of Fannie May, 200:1. That's fucking insane. It was all backed by the Federal Reserve Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of NY. On top of that, the Fed was loaning at 1% interest, far below any fair market value. Cheap money and over-leveraging. Then, when the big banks and the Fed got caught with their heads up their asses, the Treasury stepped in with TARP. More bullshit. The largest beneficiaries of the cheap money and fractional reserve banking were, of course, the big banks. So, what were these big banks doing with all of this ill gotten booty? Putting it into risky investments like CDOs. But, they weren't really risky investments because they were getting AAA ratings. Plus,they were being hedged with credit default swaps (uncollateralized insurance). Somebody please tell me why these people still have jobs?
FatFreddy
There was one ray of hope. That was Ron Paul's Bill HR 1207 The Federal Reserve Transparency Act. This Bill has over 300 co-sponsors, both R and D. It even had the support of Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank. However, just recently, the Bill was stripped in sub-committee by Rep Mel Watt (D-NC). Why? Rep Watt's district is Charlotte, NC. The corporate headquarters of BoA and Wachovia. Yes, BoA and Wachovia are in the top four of Rep Watt's contributors, along with American express and the National Banker's Association. When Rep. Watt was first elected to Congress in 1998, his top contributors were Labor Unions. However, recently Barney Frank has indicated that an audit of the Fed will be included in the new financial regulations.
newsy1
These big banks are of course fighting any reform. They are so arrogant as to think the consequences of what they caused should only be suffered by us-not them. A blog on this at; http://wp.me/py8nt-34
periscope
The only legitimate political system is where the government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.
Everything else is a form of tyranny.
However, just the fact that a government is democratically elected, doesn't necessarily mean that it will act on behalf of the people. As American history can demonstrate, almost from the opening day of George Washington's government, the rich, the special interests and their lobbyists have always had more influence than they should.
FDR's "New Deal" addressed the problem of greed by taxing the rich at a 90% marginal rate. FDR also thought that no one deserved to be paid more than $25,000/year in 1939. I would think that would amount to $250,000 year in today's dollars.
FDR was right then and is even more so in today's world of overpaid CEOs and Wall St. swindlers stealing billions in bonuses.
Thank you.
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