[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 148 (Wednesday, October 14, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H11358]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the announcement today that JPMorgan Chase, 
the largest bank in our country, turned a $3.6 billion profit in the 
most recent quarter brings to mind Charles Dickens' 19th-century 
English masterpiece, ``A Tale of Two Cities,'' except this is the 
United States, and it's the 21st century, and it's a tale not of two 
cities but of two countries.
  There is one country where giant banks are making so much money that 
they are setting aside enough to pay each worker in their investment 
banking divisions $353,834. That country is Wall Street. The other 
country is where I come from--Toledo, Ohio--and places like it across 
the Nation where the majority of the American people live. Toledo, 
Ohio, where the median household annual income is not even one-tenth of 
that amount--it's $35,216. It's not even one-tenth as much as JPMorgan 
Chase is setting aside for bonuses for its investment banking 
employees.
  In one country, banks that are too big to fail privatize their 
profits. They're taking more, but they socialize their losses, putting 
their trillion-dollar mistakes on the backs of the American taxpayers. 
In the other country, which I represent, families that are too small to 
matter lose their jobs to globalization, and they lose their homes to 
foreclosure. These same banks finance the outsourcing of their jobs, 
and they restrict credit to Main Street businesses across our country.
  In one country, financial commentators cheer as the Dow Jones 
Industrial Average goes over 10,000. In the other country, where I 
live, the unemployment rate is rising, exceeding 13 percent. While 
housing values fall more than 10 percent in a single year and 
foreclosures are going up 94 percent, JPMorgan Chase is the top 
forecloser in the Ninth Congressional District of Ohio, and they don't 
even show up for meetings with the people being affected. There is 
something wrong with this picture. There is something really wrong with 
our country, and there is something really wrong with our economy.
  Even one of the Wall Street analysts picked it up today in his 
comments to the Associated Press, saying, ``Wall Street is picking up 
quite smartly, while Main Street continues to suffer.''
  How can that be? How can the stock market be so oblivious to the pain 
that American families are feeling? Granted, a rising stock market 
might help 401(k)s and pension plans and individual portfolios, but not 
everybody is celebrating. In fact, the majority isn't. Furthermore, how 
can this stock market rally last when national unemployment is close to 
10 percent and, in some regions, far above that? How can the bullish 
sentiment override the reality in the other America where unemployment 
and foreclosures have turned the American dream into a nightmare for so 
many people--for so many millions and millions and millions of our 
fellow citizens?
  Perhaps congratulations are in order to JPMorgan on its quarterly 
report. I would only ask Chase and the other banks to remember who came 
to their rescue, because the people who bailed them out, the people in 
the other America--beyond Wall Street, those people--are still really 
hurting. The communities that they live in are really hurting. Our food 
banks are up 53 percent in requests, and donations are down 13 percent. 
This economic depression is widening across this country, but there are 
some folks in that other country who don't seem to care at all.

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