How Greedy Can Global Bankers Get?

By Jim Hightower
Author, Commentator, America’s Number One Populist

I, for one, am tired of hearing complaints that our giant, bailed-out banks have simply taken the money and run, giving nothing back to society.

That’s why I’m so pleased that a new economic analysis from English tax experts has put the lie to this canard. Their study reveals that Barclays, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, and other rescued giants have, in fact, been phenomenally helpful to many people in deep need. In particular, during 2010 alone, such bankers helped people move at least $21 trillion in wealth from the U.S. and other nations into tax havens like the Cayman Islands. Yes, these compassionate bankers created a handy financial channel so folks like us can dodge our tax bills.

What? You say you don’t have an offshore bank account and that this is just another scam for the superrich? Well, now, that’s your problem – it’s not the bankers’ fault that you lack the wealth to qualify for their benevolent assistance.

Good grief, the malevolence of these bankers is unfathomable. First, their greed destroyed the jobs and middle-class dreams of millions of workaday people. Then, we had to bail them out, while we were forced to take more cuts in wages, thus plunging millions into poverty. And they repay us… how? By foreclosing on our homes, secretly jacking up our interest rates, laundering money for terrorists, and helping the shameless über-wealthy hide trillions of dollars in the black holes of offshore accounts to escape paying the taxes they owe to America – money desperately needed to rebuild the middle class.

These soulless scoundrels would steal the nickels off a dead man’s eyes – and their avaricious abuse is pushing people to the point of parading guillotines down Wall Street. To see the full report on their tax-dodging scam, go to TaxJustice.net.

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National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks. Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top. He publishes a populist political newsletter, “The Hightower Lowdown.” He is a New York Times best-selling author, and has written seven books including, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back; If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates; and There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. His newspaper column is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate.

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This piece was first published on Jim Hightower’s website.