Private-equity baron Henry Roberts Kravis of his buyout company, KKR
& Co. (KKR), was awarded $30 million in salary and other bonuses.
That makes him No.1 best-paid CEOs of U.S.-based financial companies.
George Roberts, his cousin and co-chief executive officer of KKR, earned
$29.9 million.
Kravis and Roberts lead a list of 50 financial CEOs whose compensation collectively rose by an average of 20.4 percent in 2011 -- a year when most big banks and brokerages saw their revenues, profits and stock prices plummet. Overall, 33 of the 50 biggest financial companies had negative share returns in their 2011 fiscal years.
The highest-paid banker in the Finance 50 is Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) His total compensation increased 11 percent, to $23 million, even as the bank’s stock sank 20 percent. In mid-May of this year, Dimon called his own judgment into question when his bank announced that it had lost at least $2 billion investing in synthetic credit securities. JPMorgan’s stock dropped more than 10 percent in the two days after the disclosure.
American workers weren't so fortunate. Worker pay increased just 2.1 percent. According to Labor Department data, inflation-adjusted wages fell 2 percent in 2011. There is not a grain of truth to trickle-down economics – the theory that everyone benefits from enriching those at the top. But most Americans today are worse off than they were in 1997, a decade and a half ago. All of the benefits of growth have gone to the top.
CEOs who have taken advantage of deficiencies in corporate governance to extract for themselves an excessive share of corporate earnings; and others have used political connections to benefit from government malfunctions and inefficiencies – either excessively high prices for what the government buys at (eg Medicare drugs from pharmaceutical companies), or excessively low prices for what the government sells (mineral rights to the mining and oil industry).
Likewise, part of the wealth of those in finance comes from exploiting the poor, through predatory lending and abusive credit-card practices. Those at the top, in such cases, are enriched at the direct expense of those at the bottom.
America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity. What really matters are the statistics: to what extent do an individual's life chances depend on the income and education of his or her parents? Nowadays, these numbers show that the American dream is a myth. In the "recovery" of 2009-2010, the top 1% of US income earners captured 93% of the income growth. Other inequality indicators – like wealth, health, and life expectancy – are as bad or even worse. The clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top and increasing poverty at the bottom.
Dictators hate unions, and so do industrialists. Company managements don’t pay workers any more than they have to — look, for instance, at Walmart's low pay, one of the most virulently anti-union companies in the country. Unions represented a countervailing force that could extract higher wages or protect pay for its workers. A JPMorgan economist calculated that the majority of increased corporate profits between 2000 and 2007 were the result of “reductions in wages and benefits.”
In Winconsin, the campaign to re-call has failed and Governor Walker remains in office to re-intensify his anti-union policies. For all their faults, unions are necessary institutions. The ability of workers to organize and collectively bargain over their wages, benefits, and working conditions is not only a simple right that all workers should have. It is also critical to labor movement.
"The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working-days out of one. On the other hand...the laborer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working-class." – Marx, Das Kapital
Unions are the adversarial organisations of the working class to fight for the working class against the bosses and their government lackeys.
Kravis and Roberts lead a list of 50 financial CEOs whose compensation collectively rose by an average of 20.4 percent in 2011 -- a year when most big banks and brokerages saw their revenues, profits and stock prices plummet. Overall, 33 of the 50 biggest financial companies had negative share returns in their 2011 fiscal years.
The highest-paid banker in the Finance 50 is Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) His total compensation increased 11 percent, to $23 million, even as the bank’s stock sank 20 percent. In mid-May of this year, Dimon called his own judgment into question when his bank announced that it had lost at least $2 billion investing in synthetic credit securities. JPMorgan’s stock dropped more than 10 percent in the two days after the disclosure.
American workers weren't so fortunate. Worker pay increased just 2.1 percent. According to Labor Department data, inflation-adjusted wages fell 2 percent in 2011. There is not a grain of truth to trickle-down economics – the theory that everyone benefits from enriching those at the top. But most Americans today are worse off than they were in 1997, a decade and a half ago. All of the benefits of growth have gone to the top.
CEOs who have taken advantage of deficiencies in corporate governance to extract for themselves an excessive share of corporate earnings; and others have used political connections to benefit from government malfunctions and inefficiencies – either excessively high prices for what the government buys at (eg Medicare drugs from pharmaceutical companies), or excessively low prices for what the government sells (mineral rights to the mining and oil industry).
Likewise, part of the wealth of those in finance comes from exploiting the poor, through predatory lending and abusive credit-card practices. Those at the top, in such cases, are enriched at the direct expense of those at the bottom.
America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity. What really matters are the statistics: to what extent do an individual's life chances depend on the income and education of his or her parents? Nowadays, these numbers show that the American dream is a myth. In the "recovery" of 2009-2010, the top 1% of US income earners captured 93% of the income growth. Other inequality indicators – like wealth, health, and life expectancy – are as bad or even worse. The clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top and increasing poverty at the bottom.
Dictators hate unions, and so do industrialists. Company managements don’t pay workers any more than they have to — look, for instance, at Walmart's low pay, one of the most virulently anti-union companies in the country. Unions represented a countervailing force that could extract higher wages or protect pay for its workers. A JPMorgan economist calculated that the majority of increased corporate profits between 2000 and 2007 were the result of “reductions in wages and benefits.”
In Winconsin, the campaign to re-call has failed and Governor Walker remains in office to re-intensify his anti-union policies. For all their faults, unions are necessary institutions. The ability of workers to organize and collectively bargain over their wages, benefits, and working conditions is not only a simple right that all workers should have. It is also critical to labor movement.
"The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working-days out of one. On the other hand...the laborer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working-class." – Marx, Das Kapital
Unions are the adversarial organisations of the working class to fight for the working class against the bosses and their government lackeys.
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