Bailout Just a Blip for Big Banks

Goldman Sachs’ surprisingly high quarterly earnings were not an isolated case in the banking world this past week — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup also raked it in during the second quarter, mere months after American taxpayers bailed them out. Not surprisingly, this latest development in the banking world is ticking off a lot of said taxpaying types.

The New York Times:

Class resentment has waxed and waned in this country, but it is not typically a widespread, default emotion of the American middle class. This is at least in part because it’s an article of faith here that through some combination of hard work and luck, you might get rich, too. And why abuse, soak or heap scorn upon a group you at least have a theoretical chance of joining?

The recession — with its yawning gap between the bonus class on the one hand and the foreclosed upon and newly jobless on the other — is changing that. It’s not merely that Americans have, at least temporarily, abandoned the hope that they’ll earn scads of money. It’s the widespread sense that winners in this economy are produced by a game that’s rigged.

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