Corporate Profits Highest On Record - But Here Come The Public Sector Layoffs

The top 1% have stolen the country:

The nation’s workers may be struggling, but American companies just had their best quarter ever.

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or noninflation-adjusted terms.

The government does not adjust the numbers for inflation, in part because these corporate profits can be affected by pricing changes from all over the world. The next-highest annual corporate profits level on record was in the third quarter of 2006, when they were $1.655 trillion.

Corporate profits have been doing extremely well for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history.

Best quarter ever for the corporations - but Cuomo and Christie and Bloomberg and the rest of the corporate shills are crying poverty and calling for budget cuts, layoffs and benefit erosion.

How is it that corporate America could be doing so well while everybody else is scared they're going to lose their jobs, their health care, their pensions or 401(K)'s, and their Social Security?

The best emblem of corporate America I can think of today - Cathie "Lay 'Em Off With A Smile" Black - is coming into the NYC school system to lay off 8,000 teachers, change the salary structure from steps to bonus-based, and rid the system of as many veteran salaries and benefits as she can.

Even if Black doesn't get the job, some other corporate shill will do it for Bloomberg.

Meanwhile corporate profits are at an all-time high and Wall Street is handing out hiring perks like no-interest loans, signing bonuses, and unlimited expense accounts.

This is the kind of stuff that has been happening in the private sector ever since Reagan and that is the largest reason why corporate America just had its best quarter ever and everybody else is struggling.

They're squeezing costs and squeezing labor.

Now corporate America is bringing these "corporate values" to the public sector.

And rather than fight this stuff and call them out on it, the unions say "Well, what can you do? We have to save as many jobs as we can, so we'll take the paycuts and benefit cuts."

No wonder they own us like serfs.

No one is fighting them.