Jim Hightower : Banking Jobs on the Move (Overseas)

'These powerhouse bankers – who profit enormously from America’s people, laws, protections, and subsidies – no longer feel any responsibility for providing good American jobs'
By Jim Hightower / September 25, 2008

Let’s hear it for Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and other Wall Street banks that are opening up tens of thousands of new, well-paying jobs for researchers and analysts!

Unfortunately, the jobs are in India, the Philippines, and Eastern Europe, with many also headed to China. These powerhouse bankers – who profit enormously from America’s people, laws, protections, and subsidies – no longer feel any responsibility for providing good American jobs. Indeed, they are likely to offshore some 40 percent of their research-related jobs, cutting about 200,000 U.S. employees this year alone.

Banks are not letting their executives talk to the media about this, hoping that We the People won’t notice that these high-quality positions for America’s college graduates have gone bye-bye. They even have euphemisms for their actions, saying that the cuts should not be called offshoring, but “reengineering” of their workforce.

Call it what they will, the demise of banking jobs is moving higher up the organizational charts, including upper-level executives in charge of product development, trading, and sales. The banking job trickle out of America has become a flood. So much so that outsourcing firms in India like to joke that the only role for top bankers in the U.S. will be to greet clients and shake hands when the deal is done. Only, it no longer seems to be a joke.

The Wall Street giants get foreign employees to whom they can pay a fraction of American salaries. But what does our society get? The products and services are not improved, nor are they cheaper – the labor savings are not passed on to customers, but pocketed by those at the top. It further widens the disparity between the very wealthy and the rest of us, weakening America’s economy and undermining our democratic ideals.

If Wall Street doesn’t give a damn about Americans, why should America be underwriting Wall Street?

["...India’s Role Is Growing,” The New York Times, August 12, 2008.]

Source / Jim Hightower

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