Jim Hightower

Here's some great economic news, folks: America is back on the financial upswing, and happy days are here again!

What's that you say? Well, yes, unemployment is still rising, wages are stagnant, we see neighbors losing their homes, consumers are mired in credit card debt, health care costs are crushing people and so no and so on. But, hey, Bucko, this isn't about you.

The good news is that Wall Street bankers are on track to grab fat bonuses at the end of the year – bonuses that will rival the giddy greed-fest they were enjoying before the recent crash. Goldman Sachs, for example, just announced that it has already set aside $11.4 billion this year for banker bonuses, with Goldman's top executives expecting paydays of more than $20 million each! There, now doesn't that make you feel better about the American economy?

What this tells us is that the Princes of Wall Street have learned nothing from the mess they made of our economy – and that their culture of executive entitlement is totally intact.

Let's review the situation: one, the narcissistic recklessness of these elitist bankers brought down America's financial system, causing massive economic pain for millions of families; two, they demanded and got a multitrillion-dollar bailout from us taxpayers to save themselves; three, they promptly returned to the same secretive trading scams they practiced before and are now reinstituting the grab-all-you-can compensation ethic that rewards narcissistic recklessness; and, four, their lobbyists are swarming Washington to kill the financial reforms that We The People have demanded.

Meanwhile, Goldman insists that its hard-working bankers "deserve" such rich rewards, because they've been out there "blocking and tackling every day." Yeah, blocking reform and tackling taxpayers.