Stung by the shock defeat in the Massachusetts special Senate election, President Obama had proclaimed that he was prepared to curb the major banks and Wall Street. He referred to the bonuses in Wall Street –amounting to over $150 billion as “obscene.” “If these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I am willing to have... Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank that is too big to fail,” he said.

For bankers, the new year started the way it usually does: with massive, unjustifiable bonuses. The numbers are staggering on their own, but the situation becomes infuriating when you consider the state of the economy. Bonuses given out by major banks and securities firms for 2009 were reported to be a record-setting $145 billion, up 18% from 2008 (Wall Street Journal, 1/14/10).

International Women’s Day (IWD) was founded in 1910 in order to confront the great inequalities women faced in the labor force and society as a whole. Unfortunately, one hundred years later, women still make up a majority of the world’s poor.

In 2009, Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire and the Democrat super-majority in the state legislature wrung out a $9 billion deficit through an all-cuts budget, hacking away at everything in sight from education and health care to services for children, the poor, and the elderly. Big business and the rich, by contrast, escaped unscathed – the state’s regressive tax system remained horrendously skewed in favor of corporations like Boeing, Microsoft, Weyerhauser, Amazon, and the rich who own them.

“There’s no question this is extraordinary – the worst situation in 50 years.” That’s how Susan Urahn, director of the Pew Center for the States, described the massive budget deficits facing state governments across the country on ABC News. “We saw a $180 billion cumulative budget gap in 2009 and predict the same for 2010.”

The economic crisis in Greece is sending shockwaves through Europe’s financial and political infrastructure. The threat of debt default has fuelled feverish speculation on bond markets. The only issue on which the EU and Greek political establishment agrees is that the working-class will have to pay through savage cutbacks. This, in turn, is sparking social upheaval. Lynn Walsh reports on the gravest challenge to the eurozone since the launch of the euro currency.

On February 15, over 6,000 gathered in Olympia, WA on the steps of the state capitol building to protest further cuts to education, health care, and social services, and attacks on state workers.

Wall Street bonus season has begun again, with billions handed out in bonus pay as banks and investment firms report gigantic 2009 profits.

The future for working people under capitalism can be seen most sharply by looking at its impact on young people. The recession has accelerated already falling living standards for U.S. youth and hit young people harder than any other section of the population. 16 to 24 year-olds have lost at least 2.5 million jobs since December 2007. As of September 2009, only 46% of youth between 16 and 24 were actually working – the lowest figure on record since 1948 when the government started keeping track of this statistic.

All across the country, education is under attack. State governments have slashed the budgets of public universities, raised tuition, and cut jobs.

While the coffers of the biggest banks may be healthy enough to repay their billion-dollar bailouts, city and state treasuries are empty, despite the stimulus package.

2009 ended the way it began, with millions of workers losing their jobs, factory closures, and mass youth unemployment, while Wall Street bankers, thanks to the massive government intervention, made billions of dollars from working-class taxpayers.

The Economist reported in November that “the only executives to face criminal charges relating to the financial crisis were acquitted of lying to investors about the state of the subprime-stuffed hedge funds they ran at Bear Stearns. The funds’ collapse caused losses of $1.6 billion.”

The passing of the Tax the Rich resolution in mid-October by members at the Illinois state convention of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) shows that workers are waking up to the reality of the class war being waged by big business a lot faster than our union leaders.

In a historic show of rank-and-file opposition, 41,000 hourly workers at Ford have voted down proposed contract modifications endorsed by the company and the International leadership of the United Auto Workers (UAW).