Back in February, commentators in Washington like Tom Freidman and Ezra Klein told us that it was a travesty that the U.S. Senate passed a weak amendment attempting to stop our bailout money from being used to subsidize financial industry outsourcing. Very Serious Washington People told us that forcing taxpayers to subsidize offshoring is Responsible, and told us that only offensive Luddite "protectionists" who are "stupid and offensive" would dream of - gasp! - trying to prevent American taxpayers from being forced to subsidize the offshoring of their own jobs.
US banks that have taken billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts are still shipping thousands of jobs overseas. Earlier this month, Bank of New York Mellon, which received $3 billion in TARP funds, opened its third call center in Pune, India, where it now employs 1,300 people.
Doug Brown, who wrote "The Black Book of Outsourcing," said Bank of America, with $52.5 billion of TARP funds in the kitty, has expanded its India-based payroll to 5 percent of its 301,000 employees in 2009, about 15,000 people.
The moves, which have outraged unions, are 100 percent legal.
My guess is that - if the media bothered to widely report this - the vast majority of Americans outside Washington, D.C. would be disgusted by this arrangement, even if the vast majority of pundits in Washington, D.C. think it's A.O.K. I don't know, call me crazy, but I just think Americans crushed by the economy wouldn't be that psyched to know their taxpayer dollars are helping export more jobs.
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