In a
Reuters article about plans for $5 billion in cost-cutting at Bank of America over the next three years, this is what we hear about BoA workers:
The bank had 5,700 branches nationwide and 287,000 employees as of June 30.
Media reports on Friday said the bank was targeting 40,000 job cuts over the next three years as part of the cost-cutting program.
But we get paragraphs and paragraphs about stock prices. Forbes and the Wall Street Journal offer similar proportions, though reporting 30,000 planned job cuts rather than 40,000. NPR leads with the job cuts but doesn't have much to say about them.
Dealbook offers some insight into the lack of detail about 30,000 jobs and the emphasis on stock prices: Bank of America just isn't talking about it. When the bank's CEO described cost-cutting measures, he didn't even mention job cuts; that came later, in a statement that offered no specifics. Because to the big banks, jobs just aren't important. And financial reporters overwhelmingly go along with that.
Bank of America, by the way, paid no corporate income taxes in 2010 and "actually reported a tax benefit of almost a billion dollars." In the same year, top executives earned tens of millions of dollars. That's how we're told to understand our economy these days: the rich get millions, corporations have no responsibility to pay their fair share, and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs is a side note to lengthy discussion of stock prices.