Wells Fargo’s ties to the prison industry 2:00 am / 12 April 2012 by Charles Davis, at false dichotomy by charles davis
Wells Fargo is one of the top five largest banks in America, a fact
that on its own is damning enough, basic human decency not exactly being
conducive to success in the financial industry. Despite, or rather
because of, its role as one of the leading sub-prime mortgage lenders
prior to the 2008 crash in the housing market, the bank was handed $37 billion
from the U.S. government, a transfer of wealth from the foreclosed upon
have-nots to the haves doing the foreclosing – people like chairman and
CEO John Stumpf, whose compensation actually rose after his company’s
de facto bankruptcy to a cool $18 million last year.
As Wells Fargo has grown over the years, using its bailout funds to gobble up rival Wachovia and expand to the East Coast, so has the U.S. prison population. By 2008, one in 100 American adults were either in jail or in prison – and one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34, many simply for non-violent offenses, justice not so much blind as bigoted. Overall, more than 2.3 million people are currently behind bars, up 50 percent in the last 15 years, the land of the free now accounting for a full quarter of the world’s prisoners.
These developments are not unrelated.
Read the rest at Salon.com.
As Wells Fargo has grown over the years, using its bailout funds to gobble up rival Wachovia and expand to the East Coast, so has the U.S. prison population. By 2008, one in 100 American adults were either in jail or in prison – and one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34, many simply for non-violent offenses, justice not so much blind as bigoted. Overall, more than 2.3 million people are currently behind bars, up 50 percent in the last 15 years, the land of the free now accounting for a full quarter of the world’s prisoners.
These developments are not unrelated.
Read the rest at Salon.com.
