Bloodsucking Bankers Immune to Change

The Obama Administration is making an effort to "name and shame" them, but the vampires in banking and on Wall Street are still busy draining liquidity out of the American financial system.

According to the McClatchy newspapers, "The first report under the Home Affordable Modification Program, involving more than 30 lenders that together collect payments on 85 percent of American mortgages, found an especially dismal performance by two major national banks--Bank of America and Wells Fargo--that received $45 billion and $25 billion, respectively, in taxpayers' bailout money."

From February through July, the bloodsucking banks, too busy padding earnings and paying executive bonuses, started only 9 percent of those eligible for mortgage modifications on the process.

Beyond the Main Street parasites, the wizards of Wall Street are also back doing what they did to wreck the economy, giving themselves huge rewards for speculation that, in a classic definition, combines “private profitability” with “social uselessness.”

As Paul Krugman points out, "Even before the crisis and the bailouts, many financial-industry high-fliers made fortunes through activities that were worthless if not destructive from a social point of view. And they’re still at it."

Even the Wall Street Journal is unnerved by the Citibank trader who raked in $100 million while wheeling and dealing under a government guarantee, with the champions of free markets muttering that "disaster for taxpayers is inevitable when private reward is combined with socialized risk."

It's long past time for Tim Geithner and the Obama economic team to get tough with their former associates in the world of manipulating money for the greed of the few at the expense of the many.