The Free Market At Work: Bank Of America To Cut 30,000 Jobs In Upcoming Years

At a time when Americans are desperate for jobs, one of the top lenders in the country has decided to bolster their boom profits by firing 30,000 people in the next few years in cost-saving measures:

The reductions, equal to about 10 percent of the firm’s workforce, are part of the first phase of an overhaul that aims to remove about $5 billion in annual costs by the end of 2013. Moynihan’s plan, dubbed Project New BAC, included a management shakeup last week that elevated Thomas K. Montag and David Darnell to co-chief operating officers and left Sallie Krawcheck and Joe Price without jobs.

“We don’t have to be the biggest company out there, we have to be the best,” Moynihan, 51, said today at an investor conference in New York. “We can get out of things we don’t need to do, make the company leaner, more straightforward, more driven.”

I find this not just horribly sad but ridiculously ironic.  Keep in mind of course, that Bank of America didn't pay a red cent last year in taxes and reported boom profits for the fiscal year.  This news may surprise you, but don't let it.  These sorts of tax cuts, ensuring that wealthy corporations don't contribute to social programs, are the cornerstone of the modern GOP.

Here's the kicker, though... those tax cuts that Republicans are so dead-set on protecting?  Are supposedly there to create jobs.  The Reagonomically-inspired party line is that if a company saves money on taxes, they will put that money towards growth of the workforce and hire more people.  The fallacy of this argument, of course, is that corporate America is not concerned with putting people to work, but instead dedicated to making more money.

So tell me, GOP, is your plan working?