Patrick Martin: Wall Street Issues its Orders to Obama, Romney

The top bosses on Wall Street have issued their demands for action from the Obama administration and Congress to slash the federal deficit, in a letter warning that failure to take action by January 1 could produce a renewed financial crisis and economic slump. While not spelling out any particular measures to be adopted, the letter calls for concrete steps to restore the United States long term fiscal footing and legislation that truly restores the nation's long term fiscal soundness. These are political code words for the gutting of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs. The bankers echoed the threats by bond rating agencies S&P and Moody's, which have said they would downgrade US debt even further if there is not a bipartisan agreement to avert the so called "fiscal cliff" on January 1. S&P first downgraded US debt in August 2011, and Moody's has issued a warning of similar action. The letter was signed by 15 CEO's of banks, brokerages and insurance companies and by the head of the Financial Services Forum, the industry lobby. Among the signatories are Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, Michael Corbat, the newly installed CEO of Wells Fargo, and Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America. In other words, it was a manifesto by the financial criminals who caused the 2008 crash and the four years of mass unemployment and social misery that have followed, the heads of institutions that received trillions of dollars in federal support during the bank bailout, pressing their demand that no such support should be available to tens of millions of working people and retirees. The fiscal cliff is media jargon for a series of tax and fiscal measures now scheduled to take place automatically on or just after January 1. These include the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, first enacted in 2001 and extended in 2010 for two years. Taxes would rise across the board, both for low and middle income families and the wealthy.