And the banks laughed all the way to the banks

That's a quote from P. Sainath's latest article titled: The Free Falling Economy.

http://www.counterpunch.org/sainath01232009.html

Excerpts:
According to the Government Accountability Office, two-thirds of corporations in America paid no federal income taxes at all between 1998 and 2005. This includes a fourth of all large US companies. (That is, those with at least $ 250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts). And this, despite all these corporations collectively reporting trillions of dollars in sales.

Indeed, corporate profits were on record highs. By 2006, they made up a historic 14.1 per cent of the nation's total income. Yet, as the New York Times says: "the percentage of these profits paid out in taxes is near its lowest since the 1930s." (An earlier GAO report showed that 61 per cent of US corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1996 and 2000 - also a period of high growth and huge corporate profits.) Enough to have one wit declare that America had moved from the historic slogan of "No taxation without representation" to "Representation with no taxation."