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REBROADCAST: Les Leopold, The Looting of America
The monthly jobs report for February indicated that while Americans lost another 36,000 jobs, the rate of unemployment remained at 9.7%, the same as January and slightly less than December’s figure of 10% The fact that Wall Street firms are reporting fairly robust gains, even while new jobs aren’t being created has provided fodder for populist concerns and pushed Democrats and President Obama to tackle a jobs bill. But such legislation may get stuck in the Congressional gridlock that has marked the past year with Republicans refusing to support any domestic legislation proposed by the President. Meanwhile, corporations like the once-embattled insurance company AIG continue offering their executives a new round of enormous bonuses. Despite receiving $182 billion in tax-payer funded bailouts, AIG offered more than a $100 million in bonuses to its employees a year ago. This year, a similar round has been promised to the same set of employees, ostensibly the same people who made decisions to insure toxic bank assets that led to the company’s near demise to begin with. Today we spend the hour taking a look at the intricacies of this recession, in lay person’s language, with author Les Leopold. His new book is called The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity — and What We Can Do About It. In his book, Leopold says, “While we teeter between an economic recession and another great depression, we need to listen to new voices, not just the so-called financial experts that got us here. We need to start hearing the real truths about what has happened and then figure out what we’re doing about it.”

GUEST: Les Leopold, author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity — and What We Can Do About It