Bank of America Hands Out 30,000 Pink Slips To Boost Profits

By on September 13, 2011 in News 34

American Union BankAaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:

Bank of America announced it would send 30,000 more people to the unemployment line in a massive layoff in the hopes of cutting costs. The majority of people cut would be those working in data centers and deposit systems, according to reports from Bloomberg.

The layoffs are part of a plan by CEO Brian T. Moynihan, who wishes to cut $5 billion in annual costs in order to bolster the bank’s profits and stock:

“Profit is under pressure mainly because of losses, legal costs and writedowns tied to the 2008 takeover of subprime lender Countrywide Financial Corp. At the same time, revenue is shrinking as the U.S. economy slows. Moynihan has said that because the bank is one of the biggest consumer lenders, its fortunes are closely tied to home prices and the jobless rate.”

According to some admittedly unscientific data, the average salary for a Bank of America job is probably right around the $50,000 per year mark. Moynihan pulls down nearly $2 million per year in a salary and other sources of income. Recently, he told investors his entire net worth is in Bank of America, whose stock has been plummeting.

Here we see a very familiar narrative in America today, one that is exactly why our economy still keeps sinking, why home prices continue to remain stagnant. A CEO who pulls down a salary 35 times larger than an average employee, whose fortune is directly tied to bank profits, is deciding the fate of that employee. Moreover, he blames current jobless rate for at least part of his company’s current woes. How exactly will another 30,000 unemployed individuals help bring that same economy back out of the toilet? The wealthiest of Americans are not only deciding the fate of the rest of us, some are actively hurting the average wage earner economically, in order to keep their riches.

Read the full post at Diatribe Media

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  • Anonymous

    Yay!

  • Wanooski

    Where are the torches and pitchforks? Oh, that’s right, there are moronic television shows to watch instead. Back to your bread and games Americans.

  • Anonymous

    Dont worry Obama has a BOLD plan that will reinvigorate the economy…..TAX BREAKS

  • Wanooski

    And reducing restrictions on Ozone pollution, which is already high enough that it is causing significant damage to vegetation country wide. Seriously, go outside and take a close look at the trees. They are not healthy. They are seriously in trouble. And Obummer is letting them make it worse.

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    Its just gunna keep going until bank CEO’s sit atop a mountain of cash, and a bunch of robots running their ATM’s.

    Good thing is at that point Its just 1 guy to assassinate to take down a bank (but you gotta get past all his robot masters and robot underlings) 

  • Elmyr23

    I knew all my hours in fallout: new vegas would pay off one day.

  • Wanooski

    Actually it’ll more likely go until the oligarchs are living in an airtight habitat on a burned out wasteland that was once the living world, with “money” still flowing into their accounts. Seriously, that’s what we’re headed for.

  • Spynnal

    Saw an interesting report that something like 15% of American monies were deposited into the major banks back in the 1970′s.  Today, something like 38% of all monies in the nation are deposited with major banks.

    They have been empowered by average Americans.

    Moving your money into FDIC insured local banks gets you the same protections, and lessens the impacts of these “too big to fail” conglomerates.

    If people reacted to the 30k in job losses by moving their money away from BoA, they would likely think of using mass layoffs as a profit plan in the future.

  • Wanooski

    Except, most of the local banks are now franchises belonging to the big banks.

  • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

    thats only if Jack Bower fails at assassinating all the CEO’s but we all know, he never fails.

  • Wanooski

    Well granted that will likely be about 100 years in the future. 2100 on earth isn’t shaping up to be a banner year.

  • Okarin

    we’re getting close mainstream mindset is still to hang on to what you have left if this happens enough it’ll change to nothing to lose

  • Anonymous

    Damn!  I see I’m already too late. . . .

    I was sent back in time from the year 2047 just as the Anarch forces were breaching the inner gates of Bank of America’s martian stronghold, in a last desparate bid to keep the rebel leader Ben Screwed II from finally toppling the plutokropolis and its corporate elite overlords.

    It’s probably too late for me to prevent Ben’s dad, laid off and eventually evicted by BoA, from descending into the spiral of self-loathing and mysogyny that leads to the fateful events of October 17th, 2011–and Ben’s sacred oath to destroy the loathesome sh*tbags that ruined his dad, his family and his town.

    My only hope now is to re-set the time machine’s coordinates for August 16th, 2002, Ben’s birth date, and liquidate the entire Screwed family. 

    It may be the only way to save Bank of America.  Just pray that I’m successful.

  • Wanooski

    Did those anarchists happen to be Bogdanovists?
    Cookie for that reference.

  • iPINCH

    sad but true

  • iPINCH

    computers do all their work. IT guys should be ashamed for servicing banks. big waste of technology. now these unemployed people need to team up and make a new company or start some bands or art gallery. not totally serious its a complex issue so dont bother flaming  

  • Mamagriff50

    And….”The beat goes on”…..   The rich get richer, the middle class disappears, the welfare lines grow, and the food kitchens are over burdoned………REVOLUTION….Anyone?

  • Anonymous

    I have to admit I’m drawing a total blank.  Maybe I need a remedial primer on Anarchism.

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    I love you, man. That is all.

  • Wanooski

    No, it’s a reference to the science fiction novel trilogy Red Mars{spoilers start here}, there is a prominent anarchist group/sect within the “underground” in the books that were influenced by a man named Arkady Bogdanov, one of the first hundred colonists, who had a gleeful disdain for authority. {spoilers end here}

    I just thought it was a good reference given the fact that you said there were anarchists on Mars.

  • Stumage

    It’ll ha[[en, just wait, with 30 000 people getting screwed over, He’ll get whats coming to him, remember the longer it takes, the harder it hits.

  • Stumage

    It’ll ha[[en, just wait, with 30 000 people getting screwed over, He’ll get whats coming to him, remember the longer it takes, the harder it hits.

  • Stumage

    It’ll ha[[en, just wait, with 30 000 people getting screwed over, He’ll get whats coming to him, remember the longer it takes, the harder it hits.

  • Stumage

    It’ll ha[[en, just wait, with 30 000 people getting screwed over, He’ll get whats coming to him, remember the longer it takes, the harder it hits.

  • Nunzio X

    I think I’d enjoy a “reality show” where angry mobs of shat-upon former BoA employees track down “shareholders” and “management” and proceed to kick the living shit out of them.

    Bonus points to anyone who paints “666″ on any “manager’s” forehead.

  • Nunzio X

    I think I’d enjoy a “reality show” where angry mobs of shat-upon former BoA employees track down “shareholders” and “management” and proceed to kick the living shit out of them.

    Bonus points to anyone who paints “666″ on any “manager’s” forehead.

  • Nuggett

    Some IT guys need income.  I worked for a company I hated for 3 years.  Once a better opportunity came, I said “peace” and took my saved vacation days as my “two weeks notice.”  

    I’m glad I worked at that company, because I learned alot about the enemy.

  • Anonymous

    When you figure out a good way to get people motivated to think enough to realize what is actually in their self interest through all the propaganda they’re bombarded with, let us know. I’ve reached the end of my ideas on the subject with absolutely no success. You can get through to individuals but there’s too many people who are too lazy to think for themselves. So to have a revolution, so either need to wake enough people up, or you need to co-opt the propaganda so the sheeple think that following you is more in their interest than following someone else.

  • Anonymous

    And those that aren’t are in danger of being bought out by them. In the last five years I’ve had six banks. I did not change my bank account or move any funds. I started with a small local bank who only had a couple branches and then the bank that bought it got bought out by an even bigger bank, ad infinitum.

  • Tuna Ghost

    Maybe I’ve read too many Grant Morrison comics, but I’ve been thinking along the lines of co-opting the propaganda.  ”Take control of the spectacle”, as he would say.  When I was growing up I figured the future would be better because all the ignorant dinosaurs would start dying off and my generation would come into power.  ”We’re smarter,” I told myself, “and as for the dumb ones, well shit, we can handle them.  After all, they’re stupid“.  

    Adorably stupid, eh?  Too late I realized how vastly outnumbered and outgunned I was.  

  • Tuna Ghost

    The problem is, blaming any one person or even the whole management is attacking the wrong target.  If the CEO didn’t make that decision, or any decision that values short-term profits above all else, he’d be fired and probably sued.  Like Chomsky said, it’s pointless to ask if these men are “evil” when its the system that keeps these sorts of things going.  

  • jchadbou

    I enjoyed the commentary on how cutting jobs for profits doesn’t help to solve the problem.  It is true that the decisions these CEOs make conform to the same short sighted origins.  I wonder how many of these jobs are also cut because of foreign investment interests?

  • Wanooski

    That’s happened about 3 times to the bank I use.

  • josh

    wow, why do i still ahve a BOA account? these gusy are such creeps.