Those Poor, Suffering Rich

You know, there was a time when Democrats like Harry Truman were not afraid of saying "The Republicans are the Rich Man's Party, while the Democrats are the Party of The Common Man."

Here's the thing: Fuck the rich. They've been doing just fine for the last 35 years, getting richer and richer and richer, while no one else has gotten a raise.

The top marginal tax rate during the administration of that notorious Leninist, Ike, was 91.5 percent. That is not a typo. It resulted in it not being worthwhile to make 300 times as much as your lower paid workers, because taxes would eat up the portion of your income that could be described as obscene. The fifties were not exactly a time of breadlines and hardship. There was a broad and solid middle class.

The NY Times has a story up about Washington Mutual's descent into insolvency. Money grafs:

During Mr. Killinger’s tenure, WaMu pressed sales agents to pump out loans while disregarding borrowers’ incomes and assets, according to former employees. The bank set up what insiders described as a system of dubious legality that enabled real estate agents to collect fees of more than $10,000 for bringing in borrowers, sometimes making the agents more beholden to WaMu than they were to their clients.

WaMu gave mortgage brokers handsome commissions for selling the riskiest loans, which carried higher fees, bolstering profits and ultimately the compensation of the bank’s executives. WaMu pressured appraisers to provide inflated property values that made loans appear less risky, enabling Wall Street to bundle them more easily for sale to investors.