A memo from a Bank of America executive shows that the bank wants MORE people to lose their jobs in the coming year. Also, Dick Cheney is getting a political makeover by his former critics, all because he also doesn’t like Donald Trump. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: A memo from a Bank of America executive shows that the bank warns that more people need to lose their job. That’s their memo. It’s better if more people lose their job, because then there’s competition. And, and you see, if you have, if, if you, if you have one job and you have five people competing for the one job, who’s that’s better, is better for the Chamber of Commerce, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Because we can hold down wages. We can hold down benefits. That’s what this is all about, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It really is. And, you know, you, you hit it on the head there because what Bank of America wants is five people for every job opening, not one job open, or, or five job openings for every one person.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: Which is what we’re looking at in an economy right now. Not necessarily that ratio, but there’s more job vacancies than job seekers, which means the job seekers can be choosy. They can say, I don’t wanna go work for Bank of America. You pay horrible wages. I’m gonna go work for this other company. So Bank of America loses out. They, they have a position still needs to be filled. So what do they have to do? They have to raise their wages and increase their benefits to attract more people.
Mike Papantonio: But if you got five people going after the one job you say, I’m sorry, Mary, and I’m sorry, Joe. We just don’t pay that much. We don’t pay minimum wages. You know, we pay, we pay slave wages. We don’t give you insurance. We don’t give you any benefits. But you know what? If you don’t want the job, there’s five people right behind you. That’s what this memo is about.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And I, you know, I love the Intercept. I don’t think there’s a better, to me that organization, the reporting there is excellent. And they did another excellent job here and they just got it right. They talked about something, you had to take, you know, economics. We had to study Adam Smith. I had to study Adam Smith. And I, I forgot that what he said until I saw it in this article. But I, I remember this issue coming up in that course. And he says, look, it’s not high wages that are the problem. That’s what he said. Because an economy builds from the bottom up. That if you give people high wages, it improves the, it improves the entire economy, GDP, everything. He said, the problem is high profits. He says, because high profits is where things go wrong.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. And Bank of America is still making money, hand over fist, as most Wall Street banks are and they want desperation. They want somebody so desperate for a job, because there’s no other options.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: That they’re willing to go and work for these horrendous wages, the horrible conditions, the long hours with no overtime, whatever it is. But we don’t have that right now. And, and even economists these horrible economists that we have in this country are telling us, no, we need more unemployment to help with inflation. No we don’t. We have to get to the heart of it, which is this corporate greed, to address that issue.
Mike Papantonio: Bludgeon the worker back in line. That’s what this is about. Bludgeon the worker back in line. And the economy doesn’t benefit because there’s no money coming in at the bottom of the economy to build from the bottom up. Adam Smith was right. That’s what he was talking about when he talked about this very thing.
Mike Papantonio: Dick Cheney’s getting a political makeover for his former critics all because he, because they don’t like Donald Trump. This story, okay. Let me, let me put into perspective. This is a man who was, he, he was actually regarded by all the media as Darth Vader, because he was responsible for the big lie that killed a million people in Iraq. He drove that train. He created all the subterfuge that allowed us to go into Iraq. And, you know, he controlled the media even. You think back on Iraq, think about CNN and Fox and they’ve got these big maps on the floor. And Dick Cheney says this and Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney was the guy most responsible for the Iraq disaster. Now he is the hero, he is absolutely the hero of the Democrats. These people who’ve said, my God, he’s awful. Well, apparently not.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. You know,
and even Dick Cheney’s horribleness goes, you know, way further back than Iraq, with Iran Contra. He was in the Nixon administration and all the while from Nixon until he left office, his whole idea was let’s expand the power that the president has.
Mike Papantonio: Right. If you expand the power of the president, we can pick a war wherever we want. We’re not gonna have Congress getting in our way. And you know, Halliburton connection, how many billions and billions and hundreds of billions of dollars did Iraq, did, did Halliburton make an Iraq? Well, who was in charge of that?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: The Dick. You know.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: The Dick was in charge of that. But now the Dick is the hero. He’s the absolute hero of, of not only, not only just middle of the road Democrats, but progressives all because he hates Trump and his crazy daughter hates Trump. And his crazy daughter, if you look at her history, will scare the bejesus out of you.
Farron Cousins: Right. And she still voted with the entire Republican party over 93% of the time.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So there really is no daylight between any of these people. But the funny thing is, you know, talking about the rehabilitation of this guy. Back in January when he shows up at Congress for the one year anniversary of January 6th, he gets a standing ovation.
Mike Papantonio: I know.
Farron Cousins: Like, the Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, everybody standing up, oh my God, we love you.
Mike Papantonio: It’s insane. It’s insane. Look, here’s what really set me off. The, you know, he goes from being Darth Vader. Do you realize the Washington Post said that between him and his daughter, they are the new Obi-Wan Kenobi. They are, I’m not making it up, Washington Post says yes, these folks are like the Obi-Wan Kenobi come to save this Republic. Now, how do you get there?
Farron Cousins: Well, you get there because all you have to do is come out and say, hey, I hate Donald Trump too. He’s a really bad guy. So I am your best friend. Forget about all those pictures from Abu Ghraib. Forget about GITMO.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, by the way, he invented Abu Ghraib. I mean, he’s the guy who made Abu Ghraib happen because of what you said. He said, the president has the ability to do that. We don’t need Congress. This guy is a war pig. And you know, the other part of the story, people don’t know the Dick here. Well, the Dick in the, in 2000 election, he was the guy who was tapped to go find a vice president. Well, it just so happens, he appointed himself as that person, the vice president, because his relationship with Halliburton. He knew he was gonna make a ton of money if he could just start another war that cost us a million lives and God knows how much money.
Farron Cousins: But, you know, what’s really disturbing about this is that he’s not the only one who’s had this image makeover.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: All of these other individual, I mean George W. Bush. Oh, well he was so cute handing Michelle Obama a piece of candy at Trump’s inauguration. We love him now. He couldn’t figure out how to put on his raincoat. So he’s a hilarious.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, hilarious.
Farron Cousins: He just painting his beautiful pictures. His approval rating is back up into the seventies.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Was at 40 when we were talking about how disgusting the guy was.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: The same thing that happened with Avenatti. You’ve done story after story on Avenatti. Dems, I love this guy. Well, okay. You know, he was caught stealing money from clients to the tens of thousands, actually millions of dollars stealing from clients, but he was the Democratic guy. Then you had Scar, Scaramucci, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Tell me that story.
Farron Cousins: Anthony Scaramucci who lasted, you know, the famous 10 days as Donald Trump’s press secretary, you know, was so excited to be there. We’re making America great again. Then he gets fired and says, well, I hate Trump now. And so all of the liberal podcasters say, well, come onto my show and let’s talk about how bad Trump is.
Mike Papantonio: How about, how about Michael Cohen?
Farron Cousins: Oh my God.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Tell, this is another love story that develops with the Democrats because he’s willing to say I hate Trump, so.
Farron Cousins: Right. Michael Cohen spends 20 years of his life fixing all of Donald Trump’s legal problems, you know, wanting to live the high life like he sees Trump doing. Taking money here and there. Absolute just scumbag. But then he gets busted and now he says, well, I hate Trump too now. So the liberals, once again say, well, come on over to our side, buddy. You’re our best friend.
Mike Papantonio: Well, the Dick, he is now the new face of the Democratic party if you believe what you’re seeing. I can’t even believe what I’m seeing. Farron, thanks for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week. But all of these segments are gonna be available the coming week right here on this channel and you can follow us on Twitter @AmericasLawyer. I’m Mike Papantonio and this has been America’s Lawyer, where every week we tell the stories that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em or their political connections don’t allow for it. So we’re gonna see you next week, I hope.
