Let's weigh the pros and cons of the record bonuses going to Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley (and many others) during the worst economic crash since 1929:

Pros:
1. The bonus winners found a way to get rich. This is America and if you're smart enough...

To: President Obama
From: The Looting of America
Re: Speech you should give to prevent a Republican sweep next fall.

"My fellow-Americans,

We face a true national emergency. More than 30 million Americans are without jobs or are working part-time because there...

"Wall Street will remain a big, important part of our economy, just as it was in the '70s and the '80s. It just won't be half of our economy....We don't want every single college grad with mathematical aptitude to become a derivatives trader." -- President Obama, May 2, 2009.

It's...

It's just sitting out there.

Talk to your neighbors and you can sense how angry they are about the rich gaining ever more wealth during the Great Recession. They understand that the bailout money -- our tax dollars -- went to the largest financial institutions in the world which...

Everyone realizes that we have to do something about "too big to fail." But there are two fundamentally different paths: one threatens the very existence of the billionaire bailout society and the other makes it permanent.

The obvious way to end "too big to fail" is to break up large...

Democracy, socialism, capitalism, neo-liberalism -- none of them do justice to who we are and where we're headed. Socialism left the planet several decades ago, except in the minds of Fox News pundits. We're not sure what capitalism really is anymore, now that we've bailed out the entire financial sector....

We are entering the billionaire bailout society.

For the past thirty years we have minted billionaires, and we have created the most unequal distribution of wealth since 1928-29. This didn't happen by accident. We deliberately deregulated the financial sector and we deliberately eliminated the steep progressive taxes on the...

You knew this was coming. The Obama administration had to come down hard on the companies that received the most obvious bailouts -- Bank of America Corp., American International Group (AIG), Citigroup, General Motors, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial. They had to do something to show they were not Wall...

Are we becoming a nation of hypocrites?

We force very low income single moms to jump through hoops to get their welfare checks. We resent them living off our tax payer dollars. We want them out working hard to support themselves even if there are no suitable jobs available, no...

Bloomber News:

U.S. regulators should consider breaking up large financial institutions considered "too big to fail," former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said. Those banks have an implicit subsidy allowing them to borrow at lower cost because lenders believe the government will always step in to...

For some of us.

It's time to recognize what it means to be part of the billionaire-bailout nation. Citizenship comes in three distinct flavors.

If you are wealthy, it's fantastic to take part in the resurgent Wall Street boom. You are thrilled to see the trillions in taxpayer dollars...

Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times:

To put that $23 billion bonus pool number in perspective, it is the most Goldman Sachs has accumulated for bonuses in its history -- twice as much as in 2008. And it is doing so while memories are still fresh that just a...

New York Times:

The banking giant Citigroup is saying goodbye to its $100 million man, Andrew J. Hall, and the commodities firm he ran. While the firm had generated big profits for the bank, it had also led to significant controversy because of Mr. Hall's huge promised bonus.... Citigroup...

Legislation by Representative Barney Frank to tighten derivatives regulation contains an exemption that may let most financial firms escape new collateral and disclosure rules, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said.

It's time to watch Wall Street flex its political muscle. The...

"Now main streets whitewashed windows and vacant stores

Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to
Your hometown, your hometown,...

It's great to know that during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans, according to Forbes, actually increased by $30 billion. Well golly, that's only a 2 percent increase, much less than the double digit returns the wealthy had grown accustomed...

Despite Wall Street's recklessness, we still seem more comfortable with the financial sector than with manufacturing. After all, manufacturing has a two hundred year history of occupational disease and environmental destruction. It produces poisons we don't want, consumer goods we don't need, and it uses more energy than we can...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's "pay czar" said on Friday he will not cap compensation for the top employees at bailed-out companies, and will not reveal names, when he releases the first wave of decisions within a few weeks. "We don't want specific names next to dollars,"...

One major difference between the Great Depression and the Great Recession is the death of a visionary progressive movement. Yes, the Republicans and the media like to call liberal Democrats "Left," but that just means they are slightly more moderate than Attila the Hun.

Many in the 1930s believed...

If conservative Democrats succeed in taxing high end health care policies, the entire party will suffer, and for good reason.

Supposedly, taxing these plans will help drive down overall health care costs as well as raise needed revenue for extending health care to all.

But the logic behind...