the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 28, 2013
When it comes to assigning blame for the fiasco that is the sign-up process for health care under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), fingers are pointing in every direction.
Right-wing Republican politicians did everything in their power to block the ACA legislation, and are now pointing at the Obama administration. That doesn’t mean they are proposing a more efficient way to deliver health care to the population. Not at all! They would rather chew their feet off than allow any type of national health care to be established.
Democrats are saying it’s only a question of computer system “glitches.” “Glitches?” Millions of Americans have accessed the sign-up sites, only to come away with no result.
In the beginning, the crash was blamed on the numbers of people applying for health care; millions of applicants were totally unexpected. How can that be? Everyone knows there are many millions uninsured. The numbers trying to sign up show how many people must be in dire need of health care today.
Why can’t this new system serve them? Because the whole design of the program was engineered by the big insurance concerns like Blue Cross Blue Shield nationwide. With 150 insurance companies competing for every penny, a disaster was in the forecast.
Instead of allowing people to access the HealthCare.gov website for comparison-shopping of insurance plans, people were forced to create an application and provide basic information to set up an account. From this point forward, there were a multitude of links that had to be made by the system to verify applicant information regarding previous insurance, health care, citizenship, legal residence, dual enrollment in other government programs, tax payment… the list goes on and on.
No wonder the system went crashing down. But how ridiculous is this? All over the world, dozens of countries big and small have succeeded in providing health care to their populations. Yes, there are problems with this care, especially as profit begins to extend its hold on those systems. But they provide health care all the same.
In fact, the U.S. government already runs one of the most efficient, low-cost health delivery systems in the world, and that is the Medicare system.
Why didn’t the government copy this system, set up exactly the same kind of system, adding the previously uninsured to it? Why didn’t the government simply pass laws that barred the exclusion of individuals with preexisting conditions or impose limits on the out of pocket expenses of individuals? After all, it is this same agency, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which is responsible for the administration of the new system.
No, none of this was done because the ACA was set up to satisfy, first and foremost, the demands and needs of the big insurance companies and the health care corporations, not the health care needs of the population.
It is this catering to the huge financial institutions and Wall Street that have created such a mess for what was supposed to be a way to insure the larger population at risk.
Leaving the insurance companies and the health care corporations in charge of a national health care system is like leaving the foxes in charge of the henhouse. We won’t get much care, and the foxes will run away with the golden egg! And we haven’t even gotten to the part yet where we find out just how much these health care packages will really cost us and what they will and won’t cover!
We need a system that guarantees basic, affordable care to every man, woman and child in this country–a system from which the drive for profit has been wrenched out.
Oct 28, 2013
Chicago Public Schools claims that Prosser High School, in the city’s Belmont-Cragin neighborhood, is overcrowded. CPS’s solution to the overcrowding is to give money to Noble Street Charters to build a charter school across the street.
Prosser had its budget cut by 1.2 million dollars this year–while the mayor proposes to give 1.3 million to Noble Street for start up costs. If that money were left with Prosser, the public school could expand, accommodating all students.
Their strategy couldn’t be more obvious: starve the public schools and force students into the charters, until public education is completely privatized.
Oct 28, 2013
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) program to spend one billion dollars to buy iPads for the students literally reeks of collusion and kickbacks. The district is paying $780 per iPad. So, not only didn’t the school district get a volume discount, it is paying a much higher price than what Apple charges in its stores. And, since this model of the iPad will soon be obsolete, Apple will have the LAUSD on the hook for another billion dollars in three to four years!
Who could be surprised by all this? Top LAUSD officials are closely tied to the big tech companies. Superintendent John Deasy had previous connections in the computer industry. He was also featured as a pitchman in a television commercial for iPads. Deputy Superintendent Jaime Aquino once worked for the parent company of Pearson, the company hired to provide curriculum for the iPads. And Apple and other Silicon Valley companies literally showered money on their favorite school board candidates during the last elections.
The corporate flunkies who run the LAUSD claim there is no money to bring back the more than 10,000 teachers and other school employees it laid off over the last five years, leaving the LAUSD with some of the biggest class sizes in the country. Nor, they say, is there money to take care of the 16,000 repair requests across the District that have yet to receive a response.
But they sure can come up with a billion dollars in cold cash real fast, to fatten the profits of some of the richest companies in the world!
Oct 28, 2013
The former CEO of Options Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. was paid $425,000 for one year managing this school of about 400 students. That’s $150,000 more than the base salary of the chancellor for all D.C. public schools; more than twice what the D.C. mayor earns; more than what the president of the United States earns.
Options Public Charter School is a cash cow! That’s the point of the movement to set up charter schools!
Oct 28, 2013
Baltimore officials just announced that Amazon would build a warehouse on the old GM site. The company plans to hire about 1,000 people to work there, starting next year.
Of course, city officials are making a mighty attractive offer to Amazon and its landlord, Duke Realty–amounting to 43 million dollars in tax credits and loan deals.
As of last year, Amazon already had built warehouses all over the country, almost 90 of them. If every city and state were as generous as Maryland, offering 40 million dollars in incentives, the company would have gotten 3.6 billion dollars in these taxpayer-funded arrangements.
Amazon’s standard pay in the warehouses is $12 an hour, or about $24,000 for full-time workers. So even if other states and cities only gave half as much per job in tax breaks, they would still pay the wages of every worker at Amazon. And Amazon keeps all this income as profit!
Oct 28, 2013
Asthma, the most common chronic disease in the U.S. affecting 40 million people, kills 3300 people every year. Yet the medicine to prevent asthma attacks is readily available.
Since the drugs exist, why do so many have trouble breathing and even die from asthma?
It’s always about the “Benjamins”–the money that can be made for the pharmaceutical companies! Millions of asthma patients can’t afford inhalers or hold the inhalers without using them due to the cost.
Even with insurance, co-pays for Advair, one of the most common asthma inhalers, range from $30 to $50 per inhaler. Maxair, another inhaler, comes with a price tag of $600 at Costco! Even with insurance, the co-pays can cost $125 or more. And Big Pharma charges Medicare and Medicaid programs an exorbitant price, over $200, for an inhaler that would cost $7.00 in a French pharmacy.
Thanks to those blood-sucking toadies known as Congress, the laws are written so that these pretend “health-care” companies can collect as much as they want to charge.
It’s a simple calculation in a for-profit system: Pay more or stop breathing.
Oct 28, 2013
Eleven thousand people applied for 600 Walmart jobs in the D.C. area.
Government officials may claim the unemployment rate went down in this area. Thousands lined up looking for work tells the real story!
Oct 28, 2013
In 1961, a large part of the East Coast was almost wiped off the face of the earth.
You didn’t know about that? That’s because, until earlier this year, all information about the bombs that fell on North Carolina was kept “classified.”
When an American B-52 bomber began to disintegrate in mid-flight over North Carolina, its crew ejected the two nuclear bombs the plane was carrying. In theory, neither should have exploded, since they each had safety devices to prevent unwanted explosions. BUT none of the three safety devices on one of the bombs worked. In fact, what prevented that bomb from exploding was a simple switch that stuck open.
The two bombs that fell over North Carolina were hydrogen weapons, 260 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. If either had exploded, not only would it have destroyed the whole state of North Carolina, but the fallout could have wiped out most of the population in cities far up the coast: Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and even as far as New York City.
But it would have been a “friendly” nuclear disaster–brought to you by the same people who destroyed Hiroshima in your name.
Oct 28, 2013
Tens of millions of low-income people could not buy groceries on Saturday, October 12 due to a crash of the food stamps computer system in 17 states.
SNAP–the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program–puts money on electronic cards for families to buy food. Xerox, the Fortune 500 Company, gets paid to maintain these food stamp cards.
They said the problem was due to a back-up generator failing along with a telephone back-up system failing as well.
In Michigan, the Department of Human Services says they will withhold 15 percent from Xerox’s October invoice due to “vendor non-compliance.”
Michigan says their monthly bill from Xerox is over half a million dollars to “run” food stamps.
Xerox said: “We apologize for any inconvenience.” Wow! No compensation for the millions of children sent to bed hungry? Xerox, this HUGE recipient of corporate welfare, has the gall to display SUCH an arrogant attitude!
Oct 28, 2013
On October 17, the U.N. proclaimed “World Day to Eradicate Poverty,” as it has since 1992, when a charity called Fourth World organized it. Their organizers hoped “the voices of those who are confronted by injustice and poverty can be heard ... [leading to] real changes in society.”
Yet at least a billion people are hungry every day in this world.
Some big celebrities actually used the day to denounce the U.N. What hypocrisy to denounce poverty and hunger for one day! The reality is that the U.N. acts to cover-up for whatever the big imperialist powers want to do. Top officials don’t bother to say a word when corporations lay off workers around the world, continuing the economic crisis, adding to human misery. The U.N. has nothing to say the other 364 days of the year while governments everywhere slash social services and cut workers’ wages, benefits and pensions.
Real change will not come about inside a system that lives by exploitation and oppression.
Oct 28, 2013
This series of three articles come from the October 25th, 2013 edition of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Recent demonstrations by high school students in Paris and in the provinces rattled the government. Students denounced its policy of deportations [of two students of Roma origins].
This upsurge was centered on two cases in particular. First, there is that of Leonarda, a fifteen-year-old junior high school student from Doubs who was arrested by the police during a field trip on October 9th. She and her family were deported to Kosovo—where she does not even speak the language—even though her entire family has lived in France for almost five years. Second, there is the case of Khatchik, a nineteen-year-old working on getting a professional certification from the Camille-Jenatzy technical college in Paris. He was deported to Armenia, where he is supposed to complete his two-year military service. These two deportations follow many, many others, but they were the sparks that set off the blaze.
Students and teachers close to these two young people reacted first, along with other organizations, like the teacher unions, like CGT Education, and youth organizations like the FIDL, the UNL, the Young Socialists, and the Young Communists.
On the morning of Thursday, October 17th, the demonstrations quickly expanded. Hundreds of high school students denouncing the government’s policy of deportations and demanding the return of these two students shut down dozens of schools in east Paris and in certain provincial cities like Grenoble and Avignon. For three days, spontaneous demonstrations and central rallies called by student organizations mobilized thousands of high school students in Paris.
President Hollande’s reaction was to justify the deportations and to propose to Leonarda that she return to France alone, without her family. This did not stop the protests—just the opposite. Hollande had barely finished his speech when some thousand students came together to demonstrate on October 19th—a Saturday afternoon and the first day of vacation—to demand the return of Leonarda along with her family, the return of Khatchik, and more generally an end to all of the deportations of students.
In defending the right to an education for everyone, with or without papers, the high school students demand a basic measure of social justice. They are absolutely right. In the nauseating atmosphere of anti-Roma propaganda these past few weeks, their protest is a real breath of fresh air.
The logic of their protest has led a good number of these students to pose more general political questions. Many are shocked that it is a left-wing government doing these deportations. But there is nothing surprising here. From Michel Rocard declaring that “We cannot welcome all the misery of the world,” to Édith Cresson boasting about entire planes full of deportees—not to mention the Socialist Party’s attitude during the Algerian War—this party has proved for a long time that it can carry out reactionary policies. Today, young people are seeing this firsthand and are becoming aware of it, which can only be a good thing.
Oct 28, 2013
Le Pen, leader of the extreme right National Front party in France, is an expert at opposing one sort of poverty to another in order to pit the poor against those who are even poorer. But all the other politicians do the same when they say that “We cannot add misery to misery.” As if the misery of workers and the unemployed is caused by the misery of the poorest!
It is not a question of spreading around the misery, and still less of choosing between two kinds of misery. This misery needs to be fought by finding the money in the pockets of the exploiters.
To understand that there is plenty of money, all that is necessary is to go to the wealthy neighborhoods where bourgeois families live–the Arnaults, Bettencourts, and Peugeots. Last year, all of these people increased their total wealth by 30 billion euros. If they have made 30 billion euros extra in the middle of this crisis, it is because they have impoverished the working class even more.
Those who want to close the borders and keep workers from immigrating sometimes do it in the name of the crisis, and other times because unemployment is too high. But who plunged the global economy into this crisis if not the financiers? Who is responsible for unemployment if not the ones who ordered the layoffs?
Certain people accuse immigrants of occupying the housing that French people lack. But without them, millions of public housing units would never have even been built, roads would not have been constructed, and factories would not have been able to run. This is still the case today.
The greed of the financial and industrial capitalists is what plunges the workers here into poverty and unemployment. The capitalists operate at the global level; for them, there is no border that can stand in their way.
After they pillaged the poor countries during the colonial period and condemned them to underdevelopment, the big capitalist companies continue to exploit these countries and to drain their blood and resources. Hundreds of millions of poor people see no solution other than to risk their lives in attempting to secretly cross the borders, because they can no longer survive in their own countries.
“The workers have no country,” Marx said, since the fate that capitalism reserves for the working class is to go where there is work. Nothing will ever be “given” to workers; nothing is ever assured, not even the right to be exploited in the country where they were born! The life of many workers is that of a perpetual nomad. For some, it is necessary to travel dozens of miles to change their workplace. But others are forced to travel thousands of miles, to change continents, to change languages, and to cut loose their former ties.
Today, young French citizens with diplomas look for careers abroad–in Great Britain, in the United States, or in Singapore. No one denies them this right. There is no reason to deny it to other workers. No matter what their nationality, their origin, or their papers, every worker must be free to travel and to settle where they want.
A class-conscious workers’ movement has always fought against all those who have tried to pit workers against each other in order to keep them from fighting the exploiters. Class solidarity and internationalism should be fundamental values of the working class.
“No to deportations” and “legalization of all workers” are among its demands. These demands are linked to whether workers think of themselves as a single force carrying out a common fight to free itself and the entire society from misery and oppression.
Capitalism has allowed for the intermixing of workers from across the entire planet. It has united them in a common fate. Their struggle to free themselves must also become a common struggle!
Oct 28, 2013
Just after young Leonarda’s deportation set off such a strong feeling of condemnation and injustice among high school students, the media continuously repeated one particular piece of information: the young girl’s father had lied about the birthplaces of his wife and children.
Why is it surprising, or even abnormal, that the use of false declarations, falsified papers, etc. should be almost required today for people trying to pass through the net of immigration? If there were no obstacles to the circulation of workers, there would be no “illegal” workers. The laws and regulations form such roadblocks that they prevent workers from simply living a normal life. In a similar sense, because the search for a job is such a bureaucratic obstacle course, unemployed workers often record an unpaid internship or volunteer work as a paying job or try to appear younger on their résumé as they get closer to their fiftieth birthday.
But small lies cannot replace a collective fight: the need to make a fight for jobs for every worker. They are only a way to get through the system, and more and more often just to survive. In any case, they have nothing in common with the lies told by politicians like Valls, Hollande, Copé, and Sarkozy, who have deliberately deceived and continue to deceive millions of workers.
Oct 28, 2013
Greek police took a four-year-old girl away from her parents, “on suspicion of child abduction.” The evidence? Well, the parents were Roma (also known as Gypsies), and Maria, the child, was ... blonde!
Calling Maria “the blond angel,” the news media fanned the flames of a racist mass frenzy against the “dark” Roma people. All the way across Europe, in Ireland, dozens of cops, flanked by “child welfare” officials, raided Roma homes. A seven-year-old blonde girl in Dublin and a two-year-old blond boy in Athlone were taken away from their parents.
Soon enough, Greek and Irish authorities proved themselves to be the real child abductors. DNA tests showed that all three children are Roma. The two children in Ireland are also the biological offspring of the parents they were taken away from.
Maria in Greece was adopted from a Roma family that was too poor to care for her. Such adoptions are apparently common among Roma people, many of whom are condemned to poverty because European governments don’t allow them to work legally.
It’s not that Greek authorities did not know all this before they raided Roma homes and jailed Maria’s adoptive parents. But they, like the Irish authorities, chose to publicly scapegoat Roma people–a group of immigrants that the authorities themselves help marginalize and impoverish.
Oct 28, 2013
Oil giant BP is covering a Chicago neighborhood with toxic dust.
BP has begun processing oil from Canada’s tar sands at a refinery in Whiting, Indiana near Chicago. This produces enormous amounts of black dust called petroleum coke: 2.2 million tons a year when the refinery is finished.
BP has already gotten so much heat for pollution from the Whiting refinery that if this coke was stored there, the EPA would make BP cover it, to prevent it from blowing into the air. So BP ships the coke a few miles away and piles it up on the Southeast Side of Chicago, where the EPA turns a blind eye.
There, a company owned by the super-rich Koch Brothers called KCBX Terminals stores the piles without even covering them with tarps. As a result, nasty black clouds of dust blow off the piles and cover the surrounding working-class neighborhood.
This dust is full of sulfur, carbon, and heavy metals. It is so thick that people who live in the area report they have to keep their children inside, keep their windows closed, and power-wash their houses every week. A monitor at Washington High School near the piles reports the state’s highest levels of toxic chromium and cadmium, as well as sulfates, which cause asthma attacks and increase the risk of heart disease.
Just a few blocks away, the city is trying to develop the former site of U.S. Steel’s South Works into an area for middle class housing and business. The city claims this area will be a showcase for “green,” energy-efficient construction. Meanwhile, they’re allowing BP and the Koch Brothers to create an environmental disaster, driving the poor people and workers who live in the area out.
Toxic clouds for workers and “green” housing for the wealthy sums up the policy of these corporations, the city government, and the EPA. Just imagine how fast they all would move if these toxic piles were on the wealthy Gold Coast!
Oct 28, 2013
City of Detroit bus drivers had to take safety into their own hands on Monday, October 21. Hundreds of drivers on both day shift and afternoon shift called in sick, shutting down bus service in Detroit.
Drivers notified passengers on Friday to try and make other arrangements over the weekend to prepare for a Monday sick-out.
The chief of police and the head of transportation for Detroit responded to this job action right away. By Monday afternoon, millions of dollars had been “found” to improve security! City leaders admitted there are not enough buses on the road and that overcrowding makes passengers angry.
Drivers did not sit home alone but rallied together at city hall. Drivers testified to the TV news about being shot at, choked and stabbed by furiously angry passengers.
It is only by workers standing together that management will do anything to improve bus safety or service.
Oct 28, 2013
During the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) strike in California, a train going at a speed of at least 60 mph struck and killed two people on October 19.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is investigating the accident, said the operator of the four-car train was one of two trainees on board with a management trainer. Before the accident, BART had indicated that they would use managers to run the trains during the strike. So, management, using non-qualified people to do the job, not only was aiming to break the strike–it also caused the death of two people.
Oct 28, 2013
A survey of people over 50 found that 82% of them expect they will have to work after they “retire.” In other words, after they retire from their lifetime job, they will have to get another job, just to make ends meet.
Whatever happened to working hard for 30 years and then enjoying the retirement you have earned? What happened was years of concessions. Pensions have been cut or fallen behind inflation. Retiree health care is being cut back, or retirees are paying more for it–like with the retired autoworkers’ health care plan, the VEBA. Wages have been cut, or raises eliminated, so you can’t save for retirement.
Everything that workers fought for years ago is being taken away now. This is the result of a conscious, decades-long policy carried out by the capitalist class–a policy that will continue up to the day the working class is ready to fight.
Oct 28, 2013
President Obama nominated Janet Yellen to replace Ben Bernanke as the head of the Federal Reserve. Obama’s choice of Yellen, an insider to the central bank and its current Vice Chair, sent a signal that his administration intends to continue the policy of “quantitative easing”–printing money to buy bad assets from the banks like mortgage-backed securities.
Political supporters of quantitative easing claim it will provide a “stimulus to job growth.” On that score, recent history shows the policy gets a big, fat zero!
Since the start of the recession in late 2008, this buying spree led the Fed to quadruple the amount of assets it holds from about 900 billion to 3.7 trillion dollars! Yet all this printing of money has resulted in no improvement in the proportion of Americans having a job. The figure of adults employed was at 63% at the start and is currently at 58%. So “quantitative easing” has done nothing for employment.
All this money in the banks’ vaults has done nothing to create jobs. That’s no surprise, since banks and corporations have no interest in creating jobs–only in creating profits. And it’s a lot easier for them to pull in record profits by taking all that free Fed money and speculating, rather than putting it into production. They have turned around and created a whole new housing bubble with all their speculation.
And yet, the Fed plans even more quantitative easing! That’s no surprise either. The government will always act in the interests of the banks and the corporations, and not the working people–unless the working class gathers its forces and intervenes to demand jobs and more.
Oct 28, 2013
Twelve Years a Slave is not an easy movie to watch; it powerfully and realistically shows part of the true story of slavery in the United States. The movie is based on the autobiography of Solomon Northrup, a free black man from Saratoga, New York, who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. in 1841 and spent 12 years as a slave in Louisiana before he was freed and returned to the North.
The movie emphasizes the slavers’ attempts to dehumanize Northrup and the slaves around him. He is a violinist, brought to Washington, D.C. to perform, only to be drugged, chained, and thrown in a dungeon. When he protests that he is a free man, he is brutally beaten. He is stripped of his name, and later traded to pay off a debt. In one of the most powerful scenes in the movie, we see Northrup strung up by the neck, almost hung to death, but left dangling for hours, his toes just able to touch the ground. Northrup also sees a woman suffer near the point of death when her children are sold away from her. He sees the best worker on a plantation, Patsy, raped by her master and abused by the master’s resentful wife. And he is forced to participate in a cruel whipping of Patsy after she goes to a neighboring plantation to get some soap.
Through the friendship that develops between Northrup and Patsy, the movie also shows how slaves relied on each other for support and comfort even though they were forced to submit to outrage after outrage.
And it shows the work slaves did to build this country. They were the ones who constructed beautiful houses and outbuildings, grew sugar and cotton, cleared woods, and transported lumber for sale while plantation owners reaped the profits of the slaves’ labor.
However, the movie does have problems. The biggest problem is that it shows the North as a happy land of racial equality. In reality, Northerners could erupt in racist fury as violent as anything in the South, as they would prove by the New York draft riots of 1863 that turned into a mass lynching of black New Yorkers, including an assault on a black orphanage.
Though the movie does show Northrup and two fellow slaves talking about an insurrection, and shows Northrup fighting back against a hired white man who tries to whip him, the movie also downplays the fights that slaves and abolitionists made against slavery. When Northrup got back to New York, he became a fighter against slavery, which is why he wrote the book originally. But except for a brief message flashed across the screen, this doesn’t make it into the movie.
Nonetheless, Twelve Years a Slave gives an unflinching picture of the horror of American slavery.
Oct 28, 2013
Rotting buildings, bathrooms welded closed, raccoons in the rafters, trash blowing in the wind … that’s what Detroit’s island park, Belle Isle, looks like these days. Absolutely, the island needs improvement!
Michigan’s Governor Snyder wants the state to take control of the park. To improve the park–or so he says.
His budget for next year says otherwise. He allocates just 3.7 million dollars–less than what the city has been spending recently, between four and six million.
No problem, says Snyder–he plans on a “public-private partnership” to save the island. Look no further than the recent Grand Prix for a glimpse of the future under such a “partnership.”
From set-up to take-down, during most of the busy summer season, island visitors were subjected to confusing reroutes, lane closures, eventually corralled into a small section–all so the Grand Prix could go on. On race weekend, Belle Isle was closed to everyone without tickets.
And afterwards? The Prix organizers promised cleanups and repairs–but they weren’t done at all or left uncompleted, leaving torn-up grass, ruts, gravel paths to nowhere, and ugly barricades randomly dotting the island.
Roger Penske, CEO of multibillion-dollar Penske Corp., used a non-profit to run the race. Its mission, “1) promote the revitalization of economically depressed areas of the City of Detroit by conducting motor vehicle racing and 2) raise funds for the preservation and improvement of Belle Isle Park.” It paid no taxes and, according to its IRS 990 form, paid no donations to either the city or the island it promised to improve; there was no indication it paid rent. The island was prostituted for the well-to-do, to do with it whatever they wanted. They may have repaired a few roads–for the race!
This is what a public-private “partnership” is: the island turned into a low-cost or even free rental site for corporate events. The people of Detroit don’t need more of these rip-offs!
Oct 28, 2013
Bank of America reported that its “wealth management operations” had their best third-quarter ever. This unit earned 719 million dollars after expenses just in these three months. Each “financial advisor” brought in one million dollars!
So if you’ve got wealth to manage, or if you own a bank that invests rich people’s money, the economy is looking great!