Because of what is happening on Wall Street and in the financing industry, lets take a look back at the May 5 issue of Forbes Magazine where Forbes ran a story on the top 20 individual earners of hedge and private equity funds. Those top 20 earned a combined total of $18.7 billion last year, up 43% from 2006. Part of the headline reads, "crumbling home prices and $100 oil helped wall street's highest earners to pull in $19 billion last year." If you averaged out what those 20 earners made, their average earnings would be $935 million each in 2007.
T. Boone Pickens was one of the 20, earning $1.2 billion. His hedge fund, BP Capital Equity, grew 24% while his commodity fund grew 40% due to large positions in Suncor Energy, Exxon-Mobil, and Occidental Petroleum. This is the same T. Boone Pickens who now wants to replace gasoline with natural gas as the fuel for automobiles.
Those 20 earners are only a drop in the bucket of the wealthy; their power is so great as to be able to manipulate the financial markets for their own personal gain. When the market loses 700 points, and price shares are dropping, they are the ones with the financial resources to scoop up those shares. There is nothing wrong with being wealthy, but when 1% of the people own 50% of stocks, that's called a monopoly.
To make matters worse for Americans, the following headline appeared in a major newspaper on September 30. "Three institutions have been gobbling up financial giants as fast as they fall, building unprecedented market power." The three to which the headline referred were Bank of America, Citigroup, and J.P. Morgan Chase --- just what the average American needs, another powerful monopoly to control money and wealth and to stick it to the average working American.
If ever our country needed people power, middle class people power at that, it is now. We have the votes to change things this November, and it is our duty to do so.
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