real utopias

Some commentators find the pontiff’s apparent scepticism about capitalism troubling but some in finance feel his call for more humanity is needed

Wall Street is celebrating, but much of America is still struggling with declining household income, higher prices for products and low interest rates for savings.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 both hit record highs on Thursday while the NASDAQ surged to its highest level in over 13 years. The year-end rally is expected to add a boost to the massive bonuses Wall Street is preparing to hand out this year. The largest Wall Street firms have reportedly set aside more than $91 billion for year-end bonuses. In response, a spinoff of Occupy Wall Street called The Other 98 Percent has launched a petition calling on employees of Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America to donate their bonuses to the ten million Americans made homeless by the housing crisis. We are joined by Alexis Goldstein, a former computer programmer at Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank who later got involved with Occupy Wall Street and is now communications director at the group, The Other 98 Percent.