“These lenders, or their fronts, can now charge rates and impose penalties that were illegal, even criminal, a generation a go,” ...

Wednesday, October 17, 2007 by CommonDreams.org | What Do Brazil, Mexico, Russia and the USA Have in Common? | by Russell Mokhiber

What do Brazil, Mexico, Russia and the USA have in common?

A rapidly expanding billionaire class.
Rampant poverty.
And a distressed middle class.

That’s the take of Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston in a soon to be released book - Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill) (Portfolio, December 2007).

In it, Johnston seeks to afflict the comfortable top one tenth of one percent of Americans — the 300,000 men, women and children who last year made more money than the bottom 150 million Americans.
...
Much of the wealth transfer upstairs has come at the hands of corporate welfare artists who have shifted billions from the middle class to the billionaire class.
...
Johnston points out that we used to prosecute loan sharks. But then we got rid of usury laws and passed new laws that allow “Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, MBNA and Citibank to exploit the poor, the unsophisticated and the foolish.”

“These lenders, or their fronts, can now charge rates and impose penalties that were illegal, even criminal, a generation a go,” he says. “The result? In the last 25 years or so, one American family in seven has sought refuge in federal bankruptcy court. ”
...
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com.