I guess the Great Recession is fading from memory. Not only has no one really been prosecuted for destroying the American economy, but we are chipping (with a jackhammer) away at the regulations that were passed to insure the banks never again ruin our economy.

It’s one of the reasons why the Republicans (with the complicity of the Democrats) inserted language written by and demanded by Citicorp in the “Cromnibus” bill that passed in December to afford the US it’s first whole years’ budget in a while. The provision lets banks (almost all banks rely upon federal insurance) deal with derivatives and swaps- just the sort of things that got us into the recession (plus those mortgage deals that sliced and diced “iffy” ones to convince folks to buy the bonds getting the mortgages off the banks balance sheets and onto the investors’ liabilities).

And, now US District Court Judge John Bates rules that the SEC should not compel companies to disclose all payments they make to sovereign countries. This suit was brought by the American Petroleum Institute, the quasi-lobbying/technical agent for the US petroleum firms.

Dodd-Frank regulations stipulated that oil/gas/mining firms had to disclose payments that exceed $ 100,000 in aggregate to foreign countries. What are these payments? Generally, they are inducements (um, ‘bribes’) to foreign countries and their rulers to afford these companies the rights for natural resource (oil, gas, and mineral) extraction- mining and refining.

Now, these bribes won’t see the light of day.

And, we all know how well we’ve been seeing the true payroll ratios for executives at public companies. Because no one has been enforcing the rule that requires companies to disclose the ratios of their top management pay to that of their average employees’. (But, we can discern (years later) that many [most] executive are being paid about 250 or more times the rate of their average employees.)

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