Welcome to IBM Employee News and Links

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• To Alliance@IBM supporters: The Alliance is the only organization that advocates and supports IBM employees and ex-employees. In fact, there are few like it in the Information Technology field. It is always difficult to keep an organization like this alive, but as a supporter you know how important it is that we exist. We are calling on you today to help keep us alive another year by joining as a member or associate member. See our online forms below. As our membership has dropped, it is imperative that we gain new members or this organization and web site will cease to exist. Help us keep our organizing and advocacy work alive!
• General Visitor Comments: Due to a lack of membership growth the comment sections will be closed until we see sufficient growth in full membership, associate membership or donations. Many of you that visit our site have not yet joined, but seem to value its existence. The only comment section that will remain open will be Job Cuts Reports. If you have information that you want the Alliance to know about please send to ibmunionalliance@gmail.com. Information of importance will be put on the front page of this web site. To join go here: Join The Alliance! or here: Join The Alliance!
• Job Cut Reports
  • Comment 10/29/10: Let's see if Sam leave when he turns 60. If he does then we'll know the company is about to totally implode. His inside knowledge of things to come will have told him to take the booty and run to the rich pastures. If he stays on then he is going to go for ever more stock buybacks, more bonuses and stock options for his execs and himself, ,more cost cutting and RAs to boost the EPS and boost his own wealth which is not still good enough for him. -anonymous-
  • Comment 10/29/10: Working with a number of clients, I am starting to see the development, management, and 2nd lines being assigned to visa resources. Actually, I've started to see this on multiple engagements (60%+ onshore) I have been on. Unfortunately not only is this happening within IBM but outside. -anonymous-
  • Comment 10/31/10: IBM Canada (MKM) is hiring back IBMers who left the company for other opportunity due to bad management for huge salaries and high band levels, reason is customers are ready to work due to the lower skills IBM employees IBM is sending to replace the ones that left, -IBM Canadian-
  • Comment 10/31/10: To "da-facts": you also forgot to mention that being selected for an RA largely depends on how well you get along with your 1st line and maybe your 2nd line. Kissing ass is key here. My last manager before I was RA'd in 09' managed to trash my reputation in 6 months. So, it was easy for her to make a decision to ax me. You know what they say about Karma, and I completely believe in it. I wouldn't kiss her ass, so.... -Glad2BGone-
  • Comment 11/01/10: I said this years ago; Somebody in management had told me the plan was to cut 80% of the American work force. It looks like they are still hard at work at that goal. You all need to join Alliance now and stop asking when the next RA is. I'm long gone, and have not been woken up in the middle of the night by a pager in over 3 years now and I don't mind that at all. I'm out of there, but the rest of you need to stop asking if there is gonna be another RA. There is, until you are all gone, so get on it and join Alliance and do something about it. -Gone_in_07-
  • Comment 11/02/10: Just got hit today. 17 years with SWG. Always a 2 or 2+ review. Told this year my job is being off-shored. I don't know if it is IBM's fault or America's. All I know is iBM's bottom line seems to be better than America's, but IBM doesn't seem to give a damn about its roots. -Anonymous-
  • Comment 11/02/10: In response to "doyathink?" - the decision has already been made to offshore HQ to China. Yes there will be another RA on 12/1 and yes prior to being downsized I did join the alliance and although I believe in the cause, it will take many, many, many more to join before any real and vivid leverage will come from it. -anonymous-
  • Comment 11/02/10: to "doyathink?", the quality factor is not there when existing service is moved to global resources, especially as IBM jumps from one country to another now, constantly trying to lower their costs. For one service, they moved resources from India to Eastern Europe back to India to China to Argentina to Brazil to Manila in two years!!!!.

    Frankly, my theory is that IBM does not care if they lose the contract after the first year. They make a big junk of transition dollars up front, hold back as much US resource expenditure in the first year as they can, and then hand-off contract services to cheapest global labor they can get without proper education, job coaching, contract knowledge exchange, etc. Then quality and service completely break down. For customer that have explicitly demanded US resources, IBM has the US resources in place but delegate as many activities and administrative stuff to GRs while appearing to be responsible for the whole job, maintaining appearances. IBM doesn't care about the customer - it's all about bait and switch to get that down payment. This has caught up with them. Also, yes, IBM is a business, and its employees cannot expect any relationship, trust or honesty, but on the whole what they are doing is unethical and larcenous. -Whoopee-

    "Job Takeover Shadowing" - new illicit KGB practice to ensure services fulfilled by global resources. Has anyone noticed that there are GR resources in monitoring roles who seem to have no purpose except to supervise their Western co-workers and report back to management whether the job, service, or new service can be moved to a GR country? Seem to be appearing on meetings and have nothing to contribute - silently doing the underhanded job of taking business and jobs away from US/Canada long time employees. Also, seem very ignorant as unable to answer questions - just note takers who can't even speak intelligently, probably reporting to some backroom group. Even executives are unaware of the purpose of these people, blind sided by the resulting decisions, and have no authority, influence or to overrule. Why aren't our managers and executives speaking up??? Who, who, who is responsible for peddling GR, forcing it down executives, employees' and customers' throats. WHO????? -Whoopee-

    Alliance Reply: Your question "Who?" is a bit misguided. You lump employees and customers in the same group with executives. Executives ARE responsible for "forcing it down the throats" of employees and customers. Executives are NOT "unaware of the purpose...". If you believe they are, then you have been severely misinformed. Translation: Lied to. Your only choice is to organize and fight back. Join Alliance@IBM and work toward an employment contract. There is NO OTHER CHOICE, besides leaving the company.

  • Comment 11/04/10: TO>>>-ibmsuks->> Where have you been ? The OLD PLAN is already FROZEN. How you will be able to access it, is where the next step hits. You won't have to wait past JULY 2011 to find out what will happen; probably sooner. Only 20% of USA resources left in 2012 and over 50% of that will be HDQ of IBM HOLDING COMPANY. You would already know now, if IBM LEGAL didn't throw a wrench into the works. -no_ky-
  • Comment 11/04/10: Yes, the old pension plan is frozen and not being added to any longer. However, nothing is stopping IBM from converting that to a cash balance plan with value or time based credits rather than the lifetime annuity. THAT is where y'all on the old plan need to worry. That is exactly where those who got shoved into cash balance got hammered. It's there, and it won't disappear, but it may well change (and don't think there's not a batch of IBM compensation lawyers working on it) to a cash balance. And you may not even get a "retire in 30 days or we convert you" - you may just get told that it is now converted; tough. Nothing is guaranteed here.

    Me? When I got my RA, I took my cash balance and 401K and rolled it into other qualified plans (no penalties) because who knows when, where or how IBM would figure out a way to scam me out of it. After all, you're retirement health account? What do you think they used to pay our severance with? IBM is nothing more than a financial manipulation center now. Not products; not services; just a money churn, from customers, skimming off a little for lower paid country employees, and the rest to the execs. See the stock price lately? That's because Sam is cutting costs - you. Oh yeah, do what I failed to do before I "got it". Join the union... -RAed Jan 09-

  • Comment 11/04/10: To RAed Jan 09, here in Canada / Ontario IBM has tried to do the following recently, convert the cash balance plans (DB) to a value or time based plan (DC) or retire in X number of days in order to keep the cash balance plan. IBM was turned down by various government agencies but I bet they were told they could do it if certain conditions were met. So they will try again for sure, we also heard they were going to do this in the US soon. Join the union asap please. -Still Hanging On-
  • Comment 11/05/10: I was at a meeting this week where Global Services Canada just announced a call to arms to raise their Q4 numbers. All employees must work Remembrance Day (a national holiday in Canada where we honor those that have lost their lives in war) AND they must work an additional 2-4 hours per week. Here's the best part - if you cannot work the holiday you must explain why. Just when you think this company has gone the lowest it can go they drill beyond the depth at which the Chilean miners were trapped. -Roboto-
  • Comment 11/05/10: IBM will offshore 8K-10K more US based Software and Support jobs to three locations in China and India by March, 2011. IBM will hire 2400 pure sales jobs in the US by June of 2011. Sales and pre-sales jobs will be 80% of all jobs left after 2013 at IBM with a majority in low cost locations. Do forget that IBM's calculations are as follows - US Job = 145K fully loaded. India = 59K fully loaded, China is 42K fully loaded. Its simple math -Bob-
  • Comment 11/06/10: Notice that IBM is no longer in the top 100 companies to work for as per Money Magazine. Also notice that several companies that contract IBM to provide support services *ARE* in the top 100. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2010/full_list/ Netapp at #7 Cisco at #16 Amongst others I'm sure. IBM is selling their soul to servicing other companies while at the same time ignoring their loyal and core business customers. There was a time when IBM was in the top 5 and surely #1. -Habib-
  • Comment 11/06/10: Sammy and all of the other greedy CEOs should be put on trial and sent to jail for running the US economy into the ground. How did they do it? By offshoring our manufacturing jobs. The root cause of our economic crisis is due to the fact that there are no more manufacturing jobs left in the US. These idiot CEOs have run this country in the ground for their own personal gain and wealth. Does Sammy care? Hell no. He has his millions. I say make him pay for the damage he has done to the US economy. Will there be more job cuts? Of course. Job cuts will continue until the employees band together with a union and stand up and fight these greedy bastard CEOs like Sammy. -RAed in 10-

News and Opinion Concerning Health Savings Accounts, Medical Costs and Health Care Reform

• Wall Street Journal: Drug Makers See Benefits in GOP Gains. By Alicia Mundy. Excerpts: The pharmaceutical industry hopes to hold on to concessions it won from Democrats during their recent brief reign in Congress, while benefiting from antiregulatory sentiment among Republicans who captured the House, industry lobbyists said. During negotiations over the health-care bill enacted in March, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the main drug-industry lobby, offered $80 billion in future cost savings and won a promise from the White House not to pursue certain cost-cutting steps sometimes sought by liberal Democrats. Among other things, the White House agreed not to push for importation of cheaper drugs from Canada or direct federal negotiation of Medicare drug prices with manufacturers. About half of the savings offered by the drug industry was intended to close a gap, or "doughnut hole," in Medicare drug coverage that many seniors face. ...

  A shift in the Senate may also help the pharmaceutical industry. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), long an industry scourge as the top Republican on the Finance Committee, will take the ranking spot on the Judiciary Committee, which has less oversight of health care. His likely replacement on Finance is Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), who has often supported the drug industry.

• New York Times editorial: Medicare and the Republicans. Excerpts: An overwhelming majority of older voters chose Republican Congressional candidates in Tuesday’s election. They were propelled in large part, we suspect, by distorted and inflammatory attack ads claiming that President Obama’s health care reforms would “gut” their Medicare coverage and implying that a Republican-controlled Congress would somehow rescue them.

  Exit polls showed that in House races, voters aged 65 or older supported Republicans over Democrats by 59 percent to 38 percent, the biggest margin in any age group. A fifth of those voters rated health care their most important issue, and more than half said that Congress should repeal the whole health care reform law. Those ads may have worked, but they were also misleading or dead wrong on several counts. ...

  Now that the campaign is over, Americans should demand that Mr. Boehner explain his plan for Medicare. Specifically: What will he do to “rescue” Medicare, without driving up the deficit or weakening the trust fund?

News and Opinion Concerning the "War on the Middle Class"

"But dependency on government has never been bad for the rich. The pretense of the laissez-faire people is that only the poor are dependent on government, while the rich take care of themselves. This argument manages to ignore all of modern history, which shows a consistent record of laissez-faire for the poor, but enormous government intervention for the rich." From Economic Justice: The American Class System, from the book Declarations of Independence by Howard Zinn.

• The Hill: Report: Social Security benefits would be cut under Republican proposals. By Vicki Needham. Excerpt: A new report shows that seniors could lose up to 50 percent of their Social Security benefits under several different Republican proposals designed to reduce the cost of the mandatory program. Social Security's chief actuary analyzed several proposals, including those by House Budget Committee ranking member Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), according to the details of the report released Wednesday by House Ways and Means Committee Democrats.
• New York Times: How the Banks Put the Economy Underwater. By Yves Smith. Excerpts: This chapter of the financial crisis is a self-inflicted wound. The major banks and their agents have for years taken shortcuts with their mortgage securitization documents — and not due to a momentary lack of attention, but as part of a systematic approach to save money and increase profits. The result can be seen in the stream of reports of colossal foreclosure mistakes: multiple banks foreclosing on the same borrower; banks trying to seize the homes of people who never had a mortgage or who had already entered into a refinancing program.

  Banks are claiming that these are just accidents. But suppose that while absent-mindedly paying a bill, you wrote a check from a bank account that you had already closed. No one would have much sympathy with excuses that you were in a hurry and didn’t mean to do it, and it really was just a technicality.

  The most visible symptoms of cutting corners have come up in the foreclosure process, but the roots lie much deeper. As has been widely documented in recent weeks, to speed up foreclosures, some banks hired low-level workers, including hair stylists and teenagers, to sign or simply stamp documents like affidavits — a job known as being a “robo-signer.” Such documents were improper, since the person signing an affidavit is attesting that he has personal knowledge of the matters at issue, which was clearly impossible for people simply stamping hundreds of documents a day. As a result, several major financial firms froze foreclosures in many states, and attorneys general in all 50 states started an investigation. ...

  When mortgage securitization took off in the 1980s, the contracts to govern these transactions were written carefully to satisfy not just well-settled, state-based real estate law, but other state and federal considerations. These included each state’s Uniform Commercial Code, which governed “secured” transactions that involve property with loans against them, and state trust law, since the packaged loans are put into a trust to protect investors. On the federal side, these deals needed to satisfy securities agencies and the Internal Revenue Service.

  This process worked well enough until roughly 2004, when the volume of transactions exploded. Fee-hungry bankers broke the origination end of the machine. One problem is well known: many lenders ceased to be concerned about the quality of the loans they were creating, since if they turned bad, someone else (the investors in the securities) would suffer.

• New York Times editorial: Drowning in Campaign Cash. Excerpts: Shrill political attacks have saturated the airwaves for months, but behind them is the real problem of this demoralizing election: the dark flow of dollars, often secretly provided by donors with very special interests. The amount is staggering: Nearly $4 billion is likely to be spent once the final figures are in, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, far more than in the 2006 midterms, which cost $2.85 billion. It could even eclipse the $4.14 billion spent in the 2004 presidential campaign.

  Much of this is a direct creation of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., which has cut away nearly all campaign finance restrictions. The court’s 2007 decision in Wisconsin Right-to-Life gave corporations and unions the right to run advocacy ads in the last 60 days of a campaign — as long as they did not expressly advocate the election or defeat of a specific candidate. This year’s Citizens United decision effectively ended even that last restriction, and pulled away all limits on corporate spending in campaigns. ...

  What is clear is that the new world of unlimited spending, both open and secret, confers huge benefits on wealthy individuals, corporations and unions. In a striking example, reported by ABC News last week, Terry Forcht, a prominent Kentucky banker and nursing home executive, helped pay for a series of attack ads against Attorney General Jack Conway, the Democratic Senate candidate. Mr. Conway is prosecuting one of Mr. Forcht’s nursing homes for allegedly covering up sexual abuse.

  Mr. Forcht has directly raised at least $21,000 for Mr. Conway’s Republican opponent, Rand Paul. He serves as the banker for American Crossroads, the shadowy group of nonprofits organized by Karl Rove that has spent nearly $30 million to defeat Democrats and more than $1 million to defeat Mr. Conway.

• truthout book review: "Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why". Book by Ian Fletcher. Review by Thom Hartmann. Excerpts: Ian Fletcher writes: “Over the last 20 years, Americans have bought over $6 trillion more from the world than we have sold back to it. That's over $20,000 per American. Ironically, if the US were a developing country, our deficits would reach the 5% level that the international monetary fund takes as a benchmark of financial crisis.”

  This is not the budget deficit that everybody is so hysterical about in the press, and which would go to zero over the next six years if the Obama administration simply let the Bush tax cuts expire in their entirety. Instead, Fletcher is talking about the trade deficit, the difference between what we buy from the world and what we sell to the world. ...

  “The US economy has ceased generating any net new jobs in internationally traded sectors in either manufacturing or services,” he notes. “The comforting myth persists that America is shifting from low-tech to high-tech employment, but we are not. We are losing jobs in both in shifting to non-tradable services–which are mostly low value–added, and thus ill–paid jobs. According to the Commerce Department, all our net new jobs are in categories such as security guards, waitresses, and the like. The vaunted 'new economy' has not contributed a single net new job to America in this century. Not one.” ...

  Fletcher also points out that “free trade” isn’t, in most cases, making the rest of the world richer or better off. “Working conditions,” he points out, “are the flip side of low pay in developing countries. Production methods long ago abandoned in the developed world – many of them dangerous and environmentally unsound – are still widely in use. In India, for example, foundry workers often don't wear socks, shoes, protective headgear, earplugs, or even eye protection. Often wearing no more than boxer shorts, they squat on the floor next to the roaring furnaces. Charles Dickens has moved to Asia.” ...

  “Even Europe seems to handle these matters better than we do: Germanic and Scandinavian Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland) usually run healthy surpluses, and the euro zone as a whole has had its trade within pocket change of balance since the euro was created in 1999. Thirteen European countries now pay their factory workers better than we do, and Germany (not China!) Was the world's largest exporter as late as 2008. Do all these countries know something we don't?” ...

  The answer is really quite simple. Transnational corporations and their shills –from think tanks to congressmen to presidents – have worked aggressively for two generations to get us into the situation we’re now in. In the process, they have made trillions of dollars, built personal and corporate empires, and through front groups like the US Chamber of Commerce now are even selecting our politicians for us by overwhelming the political process with money.

• truthout: There's No Place Like Europe: Steven Hill on Medical House Calls, Multiparty Politics, and Other American Fantasies. By Alissa Bohling. Excerpts: AB: One of the thing's that's refreshing about "Europe's Promise" is that it's so positive. Do you worry that the book will be perceived as being too starry eyed about Europe's successes or too critical of America's shortcomings?

  SH: Oh sure, I knew that was going to come. In fact, I have a part in the book where I go through these headlines that appeared in the American media between 2003 and 2006 and even through the nineties, where the American media is clearly ideological in how it reports Europe. And so I list these headlines showing, you know, "Europe's economy is going downhill; it's a basket case," when in actual fact, Europe was in the process of passing the United Stated in terms of economic output, job creation, productivity, all these sorts of things. In Newsweek International, a cover story appeared in October 2006 - the headline was something like "Europe's Great Jobs Machine" - about how Europe was surpassing the US. That article never appeared in Newsweek domestic.

  So, I knew going into it that I was going to face these sorts of headwinds. American media has this major response to discount Europe because they see Europe as this socialist enterprise. My book goes out of its way to show it's not socialist at all; it's capitalist. Europe has more Fortune 500 companies than the US and China combined, has more small businesses than we have in the US creating, two-thirds of the jobs, compared to not even half the jobs in the US. Up until the stock market crashed in 2008, if you invested your money in European stock markets, you made more on average than you did in the American stock market. But theirs is a different type of capitalism, which I call in my book social capitalism. Social capitalism creates a more broadly shared prosperity, whereas Wall Street capitalism is much more of a trickle-down type of capitalism in which more money goes into the pockets of wealthy people.

  AB: What was it like to come back to the US after going on these research trips to Europe to document the ways in which they are ahead of America and then to return to this country that's so far behind in many ways?

  SH: I did my research over a period of ten years, but there was one moment that really struck me. I was standing on a corner in Paris, this was probably midway through my research, and I realized, everyone who's walking around me, they all have health care; they all have some sort of retirement waiting for them; they have more vacation; they all have access to all these supports Americans don't have - what other difference does that make in people's mentalities to realize you have all that? An American friend of mine who's been living near Toulouse, France, for about 15 years, she got a hornet sting when I was visiting her. She calls up her doctor and, 20 minutes later, there's the French doctor with his little, black bag. What does that feel like to a person, to know that you have that kind of access to the support that you need? ...

  AB: Is there anything else you'd like to mention?

  SH: You'll see American critics say that Europeans have all these things, but they pay a lot more in taxes in order to get it. That's a myth. If you're an American paying escalating health care premiums, if you're paying higher co-payments and deductibles, if you're an American student graduating from college with a lot of debt, if you're an American paying more than $12,000 a year for childcare, you're paying more out of pocket for your own retirement, more out of pocket for senior care; what you see is that Americans actually pay a lot more out of pocket for the things that Europeans get in exchange for their taxes. So, when you look at things like the Forbes Tax Misery Index - Forbes is obviously an ideologically biased magazine, yet this Tax Misery Index is cited as an authoritative source on who pays more taxes - but all they're looking at is income tax, Social Security tax and a few other minor taxes like sales tax. When you do that kind of analysis, you see Europeans at the highest end of taxes, and here's America, down there, happy as a clam, around the Philippines and Indonesia and Malaysia. But what they're not telling you is that Americans are paying a lot more out of pocket. So, in order to square that circle that Americans are still paying more, you have to then advance the argument that, well, at least it's discretionary. But is it really the case that having things like health care, retirement, university education, are these really discretionary today, or are these things you need to support yourself and your family in this increasingly insecure age?

• Reuters: Tech execs tell White House IT can curb deficit. By Alister Bull. Excerpt: The Technology CEO Council said six chief executives led by IBM Corp's Samuel Palmisano would suggest ways to boost government worker productivity and save taxpayer money. "America's growing national debt is undermining our global competitiveness," the council said. "How we choose to confront and address this challenge will determine our future environment for growth and innovation."
• truthout: The New York Times Gets Women Voters Wrong. By Rose Aguilar. Excerpts: New York Times Los Angeles bureau chief Adam Nagourney can't seem to figure out why the latest polls in California show that Republicans Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, a "new breed of tough female corporate executives looking to shift into public office," have failed to gain the support of women voters. "At one point, it appeared that 2010 might be the year of the female Republican chief executive in California," he writes in an October 29 piece. "But less than a week before Election Day, both Ms. Whitman and Ms. Fiorina find themselves struggling." ...

  Maureen O'Connor agrees, saying gender is not a decision maker in the voting booth. "These women are poster subjects for everything that is wrong with corporate America today," she says. "Just the amount of job outsourcing these two did during their CEO days is enough to stop anyone in their tracks." ...

  Madoshi says she's also tired of the media assuming that voters will choose candidates simply because they have a background in business. "Haven't they learned anything from George W. Bush?" "Making money in business doesn't mean they are qualified to run a state or write legislation," she says. "What have Whitman and Fiorina done for working women? What have they done for working moms? Where do they stand on equal pay? Where do they stand on affordable housing?"

  It's hard to say because they haven't discussed those issues. They've spent most of their time focusing on tax breaks for corporations, spending cuts and "jobs, jobs, jobs." "For God's sakes, that's all we've heard. They're saying the same message over and over," says Tracey Faulkner, founder of the Family Resource Center, an organization that supports parents attending City College of San Francisco. "Cut spending, but give tax breaks to the rich? They're not talking to us moms at all. They're talking to business people. Moms want to know if they'll have childcare. Will there be after school programs? Will there be summer programs? People are concerned about whether their kids will be ok."

• alterNet: Class War Spurs Violent Clashes in Europe -- Why Are Americans Just Letting the Super Rich Win? It is time for Americans to reclaim the concept of class war, to actively combat the great squeeze ruining the lives of untold millions of Americans. By David Rosen. Excerpts: The great unspoken two words of American political discourse are class war. The moral and political premise of the modern, post-World War II “American Century” is that the U.S. had overcome class divisions and struggle. Everyone, or nearly everyone save the very poor and the very, very rich, was absorbed into a vast, undifferentiated middle class.

  The fiction that America is a nation without class, a lie since its inception a half-century ago, gets more and more untenable as actual class struggle daily intensifies. It’s time to accept the simple yet profound fact that America is in the midst of class war – and the super-rich, the American sector of the global oligarchy, is winning. ...

  Today’s robber barons know that the media matters and have effectively bought-off the popular opinion makers. Stylishly groomed corporate executives and financiers, who are morally no better then slick thieves, have become celebrities. They are flattered on reality TV shows, praised on business programs and voyeuristically celebrated by the popular media. The American media knows better then bite the hand that feeds it. ...

  According to NYU economist Edward Wolff, wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated. In the 15 years between 1983 and 2007, the share of wealth owned by the nation’s top 1 percent households grew to 34.6 percent from 33.8 percent; and the top 20 percent of U.S. households in 2007 controlled 85 percent of the nation’s wealth, up from 81.3 percent in ’83. The fate of America’s vast “middle class,” the remaining 80 percent, has only gotten more dire: in 2007, it controlled 15 percent, down from 18.7 percent in 1983.

  It is time for Americans to reclaim the concept of class war. This needs to be done for two reasons: first, to actively combat the great squeeze ruining the lives of untold millions of Americans faced with financial catastrophe; and, second, to end the campaign by the super-rich (in league with government tax policies, subsidies and other give-aways) and the media to keep alive the fiction of America is a classless society free of class war.

• Wall Street Journal: Higher Bonuses for Wall Street. By Aaron Lucchetti. Excerpts: Wall Street bonuses are set to rise about 5% this year, fueled by increases to compensation for employees in hedge funds, retail banking and private equity that offset declines for those in stock and bond trading, according to a survey by compensation consultants Johnson Associates Inc. The survey results, set to be released Thursday, demonstrate Wall Street's knack for finding a way to churn out profits and prop up pay levels despite uneasy markets, mounting regulation and mistrust by many Americans. ...

  A separate analysis by The Wall Street Journal concluded that large, publicly traded financial-services firms were on pace to increase total compensation and benefits by about 6% in 2010 compared with last year. Some of the largest increases, 10% or more, are likely to come from asset-management firms., the Journal's calculations show. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley are on track to increase compensation by less than 10% each.

• AOL Daily Finance: Top U.S. Incomes Grew Five-Fold in 2009, to a $519 Million Average. By Sam Gustin. Excerpts: During the depths of the recession in 2009, as millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes and life savings, the highest-paid earners in the United States saw their average incomes increase more than five-fold from 2008, according to new data from the federal government. The 74 people who earned more than $50 million last year -- the highest income category measured by the Social Security Administration -- saw their average incomes skyrocket from $91.8 million in 2008 to a mind-boggling $518.8 million in 2009. These 74 people earned an average of $10 million -- per week. Meanwhile, half of all American wage-earners, or about 75 million people, earned less than $505 per week. ...

  The names of the top 74 earners were not disclosed, but they were "most likely Wall Street traders who earned bonuses or corporate executives cashing in deferred compensation that accumulated over the years, or even highly paid athletes," Bloomberg said, citing Johnston. In an email, Johnston told DailyFinance that the top 74 earners also does not include most hedge fund managers because much of their "investment" income is not counted as wages. ...

  "This orgy of money exhibitionism has created a society in which commas - it takes three to be a billionaire - count more than character," Johnston continued. "We have gone so far down this path that we bailed out bankers, allowing them to keep the untaxed wealth in their deferral accounts and, with a few exceptions, retaining shareholder value, while wiping out investors in General Motors and Chrysler as a condition of their bailouts. And while autoworkers had to take severe pay cuts, bonus time on Wall Street is at new record levels."