Dear Editor:
What happened to the $700 billion we taxpayers are being asked to replace to bail out Wall St.? Did it just disappear? Did somebody make a bonfire and burn it? No way. Most of that money was siphoned into the pockets of the richest among us. The money didn’t vanish. It’s in the McMansions and second homes and country club fees and sports cars of the obscenely rich.
True, many Americans benefited from the housing bubble, but the windfall was not evenly distributed. How many Reporter readers last year got a bonus of $200,000 – the average amount among Wall St. executives?
So what to do? Get back some of that $700 billion by raising taxes on the ½ percent of Americans who own 50 percent of our wealth. Cap executive salaries at 10 times that of the firm’s lowest-paid employee. Protect Americans in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. Let the public in on any future profits made by bailed-out financial institutions. And restore the prudent regulatory laws instituted under President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s but removed over the past decade by politicos led by Sen. McCain’s economic advisor, former Sen. Phil Gramm.
Dan North