The Supreme Court Has Given the Green Light to Bosses and Financial Managers to Steal From Workers
Robbing workers’ pension funds has long been central to Wall Street's business model. In last week's Supreme Court ruling, Brett Kavanaugh and his conservative cadre of justices opened the door for financial managers to take their looting of those pension funds even further.
Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch (L) and Brett Kavanaugh ruled against plaintiffs in Thole v. U. S. Bank, undermining workers and retirees. Mario Tama / Getty
In the classic 1987 film Wall Street, pension funds make a brief but important appearance, as Gordon Gekko hatches a plan to steal six thousand airline workers’ retirement savings. An angry Bud Fox asks Gekko: “How much is enough?” — a question warning the audience about unbridled greed and the financial vipers in our midst.
Thirty-three years after the release of Wall Street, it seems the US Supreme Court saw the film as a guidebook rather than a cautionary tale: in a landmark ruling last week, Brett Kavanaugh and his conservative cadre undermined workers and retirees who might try to stop Gekko’s scheme at their own companies.
In the process, the ruling may have short-circuited a separate case that Wall Street was fearing.
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