Yesterday Société Générale chairman Daniel Bouton said he will resign from the French banking behemoth, saying repeated attacks on him were a threat to the bank’s health. Bouton stated “Like any manager, I have certainly made mistakes, but the strategy adopted by Société Générale has made it one of the finest banks in the euro zone. The repeated attacks against me personally in France for the past fifteen months affect me, but most of all, they risk harming the bank and its 163,000 employees,” Bouton added, saying it was “better for me to withdraw, proud of having led a wonderful company.”

Bouton was Société Générale’s chief executive in January 2008 when the bank announced one of the world’s largest trading scandals masterminded by trader Jerome Kerviel, which caused a massive loss. He stepped down as CEO last May but had remained as chairman. President Nicolas Sarkozy for top executives to face the “consequences” of the huge losses.

Kerviel maintains that his superiors were aware of his risky transactions but looked the other way while he was earning big money for the bank, intervening only when he started to lose. The bank, however, insists that it was not aware of Kerviel’s activities.

Bouton was the subject of public outrage more recently, when the bank disclosed that he will benefit from a pension of euro730,000 (US$965,000) per year when he retires. The issue of executive compensation has become a big issue in France after a series of revelations that managers at loss-making firms were pocketing bonuses.

U.S. unemployment rates are closing in on 10%. U.S. banks have received billions in bailout funds. Jobs at these banks are still being sent overseas…huh? Is it just me, or does it seem like keeping jobs in the U.S. should be a requirement for getting bailed out? The following piece by John Aidan Byrne appeared in yesterday’s New York Post.

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US banks that have taken billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts are still shipping thousands of jobs overseas.

Earlier this month, Bank of New York Mellon, which received $3 billion in TARP funds, opened its third call center in Pune, India, where it now employs 1,300 people.

Doug Brown, who wrote “The Black Book of Outsourcing,” said Bank of America, with $52.5 billion of TARP funds in the kitty, has expanded its India-based payroll to 5 percent of its 301,000 employees in 2009, about 15,000 people.

The moves, which have outraged unions, are 100 percent legal. Congress didn’t put into the TARP law any restrictions on shipping jobs overseas.

Citigroup, which got $50 billion in TARP funds plus $300 billion in government guarantees, plowed ahead with a program last fall to add as many as 1,000 call-center employees in the Philippines — weeks after it got its first round of taxpayer relief.

Representatives for Citigroup and Bank of New York Mellon declined to comment on their outsourcing arrangements. A Bank of America spokesman said the firm has not announced any facility openings outside the US since last year.

Yes it is. It has been for a long time. We have a chance to grab on and stem some of the loss, but you better believe that Big Oil is going to do everything possible to undermine our efforts. In two weeks, there’s a vote on President Obama’s plan for a new energy economy. But, according to moveon.org, key Democrats are wavering in the face of a flurry of Big Oil ads claiming America can’t afford clean energy.

From a recent letter from the MoveOn team: “If we don’t pass this bill, we’ll lose our chance to create millions of good, green jobs for laid-off workers. We’ll lose our chance to give our kids a vibrant economy. And we’ll lose our chance to pay down our national debt. U.S. investment in wind power lags far behind, but when it comes to solar power, the story is even more infuriating: In the 1990s, the U.S. actually led the world in solar cell manufacturing. But in the Bush-Cheney years, China, Japan, and Europe all zoomed ahead of us in solar production. We can catch up, but only if we start quickly. Obama’s plan would aggressively scale up American wind and solar production-creating millions of new jobs and tackling climate change in one fell swoop.”

MoveOn cites a new report by Ben Furnas of the Center for American Progress. Please read the full report here and consider helping MoveOn counter the dirty-energy companies!

In the United States we are seeing people purchase guns and ammo at an alarming rate. Looking beyond the immediate unfounded concern certain people have about the Obama administration stripping the right to bear arms, there is the fact that many loath the thought of being pulled towards anything resembling socialism. In this environment the “each man for himself” reaction threatens to undermine a much needed and long overdue sense of global community and global commitment. Let’s hope that corporations choose to give more during these tough times as opposed to holing up and hoarding the goods.

The website www.publicservice.co.uk, which touts itself as The Information Portal for the Public Sector, recently posted a piece called “A recession of rights.” Author Hannah Grene, Researcher with the International Human Rights Network, explores how worsening economies erode basic rights. Please read.

ColorOfChange.org is an internet-based movement that exists to strengthen Black America’s political voice. Following the natural and man-made disaster that was Hurricane Katrina, James Rucker and Van Jones organized to use the power of the Internet to help make change for Black Americans. The following letter from the ColorOfChange.org team highlights the deeply entrenched rascism of drug sentencing laws. This is a brutal system that has been screaming for change for far too long.

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The so-called “war on drugs” has created a national disaster: 1 in 15 Black adults in America are behind bars. It’s not because we commit more crime but largely because of unfair sentencing rules that treat 5 grams of crack cocaine–the kind found in poor Black communities–the same as 500 grams of powder cocaine, which is the kind found in White and wealthier communities. These sentencing laws are destroying communities across the country and have done almost nothing to reduce the level of drug use and crime.

We now have an opportunity to end this disaster once and for all. A bill is moving through Congress right now that would end the sentencing disparity. It’s critical that members of Congress see support from everyday folks. Join us in asking our representatives in the House and Senate to push for its passage, and please ask your friends and family to do the same. It only takes a moment:

http://colorofchange.org/crack/?id=2206-426821

At every step in the criminal justice system, Black people are at a disadvantage — we are more likely to be arrested, charged, and convicted, but less likely to have access to good legal representation, and get out of prison on parole. While there’s no denying that the presence of crack has a hugely negative impact in Black communities across the country, it’s clear that the overly harsh crack sentencing laws have done more to feed the broken system than improve our communities.

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