+1 rep just for that quote alone, LOL.

+1 rep just for that quote alone, LOL.

One of the City's leading figures has suggested that inequality created by bankers' huge salaries is a price worth paying for greater prosperity.

In remarks that will fuel the row around excessive pay, Lord Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said banks should not be ashamed of rewarding their staff.

Speaking to an audience at St Paul's Cathedral in London about morality in the marketplace last night, Griffiths said the British public should “tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all“.

He added that he knew what inequality felt like after spending his childhood in a mining town in Wales. Both his grandfathers were miners who had to retire from work through injury.

With public anger mounting at the forecast of bumper bonuses for bankers only a year after the industry was rescued by the taxpayer, he said bankers' bonuses should be seen as part of a longer-term investment in Britain's economy. “I believe that we should be thinking about the medium-term common good, not the short-term common good … We should not, therefore, be ashamed of offering compensation in an internationally competitive market which ensures the bank businesses here and employs British people,” he said.

Griffiths said that many banks would relocate abroad if the government cracked down on bonus culture. “If we said we're not going to have as big bonuses or the same bonuses as last year, I think then you'd find that lots of City firms could easily hive off their operations to Switzerland or the far east,” he said.

Public must learn to 'tolerate the inequality' of bonuses, says Goldman Sachs vice-chairman

Call it for what it is. It has more names than Satan. Call it plundering. Call it pillaging. Call it extortion, Call it fraud. Call it racketeering. Call it the financial raping of the middle class. Call it criminal. Consider the following. Middle class never consented to this financial rape. They vehemently protested it when the gov't first proposed a $700 bailout of the financial system called TARP in Septermber 2008. Yet what did Congress and our government do? They went ahead and did it anyway. This boils down to one thing, taxation without representation. Our votes do not matter anymore.

This is happening because the US government is allowing it to happen. It is one thing for the government to raise the social safety nets for the poor, elderly and such. It is entirely another to raise the social safety nets for the financial elitists at taxpayer expense. But that is exactly what the government has done in the past year. They have rescued a financial system at the expense of everyone else. Mythical constructs and messages that financial companies are Too Big to Fail, systemic risk is too great, No More Lehman Brothers have been created by the powers that be. And it is in the name of No More Lehman Brothers and Too Big to Fail that Middle Class America is being carved up and hollowed out.

A New Civil Rights Movement is Afoot for the Middle Class

NEWARK, N.J. — A private security guard at Newark Liberty International Airport was arrested on charges of threatening Barack Obama the night before the president was to fly there.

A Continental Airlines employee reported overhearing John Brek make threatening comments at an airport coffee cart Tuesday afternoon.

The 55-year-old security guard was arrested several hours later, Port Authority spokesman John Kelly said. He denied making the threats, said Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service.

Obama came to New Jersey on Wednesday to campaign for New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine.

Brek allowed police to search his Linden home and officers found 43 firearms, Kelly said. The firearms were still being processed, but no illegal guns had been found.

A message left by The Associated Press at Brek's home Wednesday was not immediately returned. His father, John, told The Star-Ledger of Newark that his son has the guns because he's an avid hunter.

Air Force One landed at the Newark airport shortly before 5 p.m. under tight security. Dozens of Secret Service and Port Authority police officers were visible, and sharpshooters were positioned on roofs of nearby buildings.

“We take every threat very seriously,” Wiley said. “We don't have the luxury of ignoring even the allegation of a threat.”

Brek is employed by Floral Park, N.Y.-based FJC Security Services Inc., which has a contract with the Port Authority. Its employees screen airport workers to ensure they have proper credentials, Kelly said.

Brek was arrested by Port Authority Police and charged under state law with making terroristic threats against the president. He has not been arrested on federal charges, Wiley said.

Bail has been set at $100,000 for Brek, who faces five years in prison for the third-degree felony charge, according to Essex County Prosecutor's Office spokesman Paul Loriquet. He said Brek is being held in the Essex County jail and is to be arraigned Thursday.

Patrick J. Conroy, executive vice president of FJC, said the company is working with authorities investigating the alleged threat. Brek has been assigned to the Newark airport for the majority of his six years with the company, Conroy said.

The Medicare Part D Bill was written to benefit the powerful pharmaceutical lobby and not the America taxpayers. Amid heavy lobbying from the pharmaceutical industry, the Medicare Part D Bill specifically prohibited Medicare from directly negotiating for lower drug prices with the drug industry. The only reason to craft the bill prohibiting price negotiations, was to benefit the drug industry, ensuring drug prices would remain high.

The big giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry was ushered through Congress by Billy Tauzin, the former Republican representative from Louisiana and chair of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, who is now president of PhRMA, the powerful drug industry’s lobbying group.

Just a few months after the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill was signed into law, Tauzin began negotiating with PhRMA for his lucrative position. Along with Tauzin, 14 congressional aides involved with the drug industry friendly Medicare Bill left their positions to work for the pharmaceutical industry.

As noted by ProPublica, “…the prices the government pays for drugs through Part D are about 30 percent higher on average than the prices it pays for drugs for Medicaid recipients, according to a 2008 report [1] by the House Committee on Oversight.”

Now, many of those former aides and lawmakers are back to ensure that the pharmaceutical industry retains its ability to reap windfall profits when seniors are moved from Medicaid to Medicare, and to torpedo any language allowing the legalization of re-importing cheaper drugs from Canada.

According to ProPublica some of the main cast of characters, include the head of PhRMA Billy Tauzin, who struck a controversial deal offering a concession worth about $30 billion over the next 10 years, with the Obama administration and the Senate Finance Committee chaired by Sen. Max Baucus. Other lawmakers have stated they are not bound by that agreement.

Some of the other returning Medicare Part D players, include former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., who fought against allowing drug prices to be negotiated in Medicare Part D, former Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., who helped negotiate the final version of Part D, Thomas Scully, the former Medicare chief who helped design Part D and many other legislative aides. All of the above mentioned Part D lawmakers left office soon after the bill was passed to either start their own lobbying firms or work for one.

This revolving door phenomenon between Congress and lobbying firms has become commonplace. Dave Levinthal, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics said, “They’re in Congress, out of Congress – then back lobbying their former colleagues.”

And every time a major bill passes there is a mass exodus of lawmakers and staffers to lobbying firms that have an interest in the future implementation of the bill.

Medicare Part D Lawmakers and Aides Resurface as Lobbyists to Influence Health Reform