May 20, 2011
I’m writing because my family and I were affected by the economic collapse of 2008, and we don’t want it to happen again.
I live on disability income & my mother lives on the meager interest from her investments. She invested conservatively per the usual standards for people who need to preserve the corpus of their funds. However, while the large investment banks & Wall Street bandits & the greedy CEO's were lining their pockets with OUR money, my mother experienced a tremendous loss. Also, because of that greed which caused the housing market to collapse, she was forced to sell her house for $20,000 less than it was worth before all this happened.
Wall Street greed and outrageous pay practices were a major cause of the collapse. One way to change the incentives so they don’t collapse our economy again would be to delay the bonuses for three, five or more years. That way, we’ll know if the loans they made in year one remain good. In the bad days, bankers paid themselves on the volume of loans (mortgages) they generated, not on their quality.
Bonuses must be restricted to normal levels as must CEO & corporate board remuneration. Quite frankly, the discrepancy that now exists between what all those guys earn & what the rest of us earn is unconscionable! I'm counting on you to ease the strain on the middle & poor classes by imposing strict regulations.
The bailouts allowed Wall Street, the banks, the CEO's, corporate boards & the people who worked there to get off Scott free while the rest of us suffered. You need to impose strict regulations to prevent this from happening in the future!
Thank you for considering my comment,
Greg Yaroslow