Olbermann: Time to get tough on bankers

Keith Olbermann Anchor, 'Countdown' • Profile

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the latest atrocity from the banks. The vast, engorged, gluttonous multi-national corporations. Whose sneezes can be fatal to our jobs. Whose mistakes can turn us into the homeless. Whose accounting errors can be so panoramic that they can make our economy tremble and force us to hand them billions after billions in a blackmail scheme that has come to be known as "bailout."

Five weeks ago Vikram Pandit, the chief executive officer of Citigroup, went back to Congress, tail seemingly between his legs, and, with entreaty dripping from his voice, announced "I get the new reality and I'll make sure Citi gets it as well."

In point of fact, as Bloomberg News reports today, what Mr. Pandit "got" was a new $10 million executive suite for himself and his key associates.

This is the same Mr. Pandit who said he would show his leadership by accepting compensation of $1 a year. In fact, he then "accepted" a total compensation package for 2008 of $38 million.

Enough!

Mr. Pandit, you're probably just a good actor and a damned liar and a con man. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume instead, that you just can't tell the difference between $1 and 38 million of them. That would certainly explain the maelstrom into which you, and your colleagues at Citi and your counterparts elsewhere, have gotten us, including the vast majority of us who are innocent bystanders.

Your bank says your new $10 million office is part of a global strategy of space reduction that will ultimately save billions. It seems entirely appropriate to remind everyone, sir, that this promise could be fulfilled by Citi saving $2 a year for a billion years.

God knows you guys have pulled off every other accounting trick every dreamt up by immoral man. You, Sir, and the other corporate pirates like you — those who are saved from your obsessive spending and greed and self-aggrandizement by the taxpayer — who then pretend to atone — who then publicly promise good behavior — and who then revert immediately to the rapaciousness that is your only skill.

You, sir, all of you, need to be fired.

Enough!

And Mr. Pandit's corporation should be cut up into little pieces. And when he and the other ultra-millionaires wonder what hit them, we should make sure they are easily reminded. Our representatives should entitle the legislation that ends their moral ponzi schemes, "The Punish Vikram Pandit Act of 2009."

The far right in this country, without the slightest provocation, screams "socialism," and the sheep who follow it, who do not know what the word means and do not know it is only being used because "communism" now rings laughably hollow. In this cry of fire in a crowded unemployment line, there is outrage.

But there is also license. They think this is socialism? There is a million miles of reform to go before we hit socialism but if they're going to call us names whether they apply or not let's give them real reform.

Break up the banks. Regulate the financial industries, to within an inch of their existences. Roll back corporate legal protections. Make liable the officers of corporations, for their debts, and for their deeds. Resurrect the rallying cry of a hundred years past: bust the trusts!

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