An Orwellian “Free Market” Economy
According to a Wall Street Journal analysis released last week, 23 publicly traded Wall Street banks and securities firms are on track to pay out record employee retention bonuses for 2009.
Only the timely intervention of Balloon Boy saved America’s overtaxed punditry from having to rationalize this latest round of financial shenanigans. After all, what’s 140billiondollars compared to a Hapless Six-Year-Old Careening Over the Colorado Badlands in a Giant JiffyPop Bag!?
Who cares that the average Goldman Sachs employee compensation package was cough, $743,000.55? Quick, look over here! A family of greedy publicity-hounds has tried to make a quick buck off our naïve trust. We have all been betrayed! Especially here in the press. And the kid barfed on national TV. Twice!
It’s more fun to gawk and jeer over the public misdeeds of minor players, than to confront the boring-but-important outrages of the major ones. This year alone, we taxpayers will essentially transfer a sum 10% larger than the gross national product of New Zealand directly into the bespoke silk pockets of some of some of the most greedy, inept, and incompetent individuals in the history of the planet. But other than a few bleats in the business media, the public has completely ignored this story. Ho hum, another 140 Billion to another special interest.
We know there is no way these Lamborghini-driving douches deserve the obscene amounts of our hard-earned money they seem to think they’re entitled to, but somehow we give them a pass because they seem so removed, so exotic, so alien to us. Four hundred dollar lunches and six hundred dollar haircuts are as foreign to most of us as living in a cardboard and chicken wire hut feeding our kids out of a Friskies can. We can maybe imagine what it might be like to live in a world where daycare costs $70,000 a year, but it’s hard to relate—especially when we’re struggling to make ends meet down here in the real world. More to the point, these elevated souls are so barricaded behind their wrought iron gates and maitre d’s that we couldn’t give them a piece of our mind even if we could track them down to do so.
Still, the apologists are rife. “We need these bonuses to attract and retain the best executives,” I heard on one AM radio personality intone recently. “It’s the community standard they’ve come to expect. I winced. Yeah, and “community standards” say my house is worth a half a million bucks…. “It’s complicated,” the guy continued. “And what about all the illegal aliens? They get taxpayer-subsidized bonuses every day.”
I was a bit taken aback by this one; blatant pandering even by talk radio’s well-honed deflect and divert standards. “Well, yeah,” I thought , “what about them?”
I know from personal experience that the stereotype of 10 Mexicans in a doublewide is not necessarily hyperbole. Having been subjected to the noise, the pollution and the rampant social services fraud of some of these households, I’m not so quick to cry “racist” when someone makes a snide remark about my neighbors. And there is no way you can tell me that one minimum wage taxpayer is going to make up for the cost of feeding, educating, housing, and caring for his wheelchair-bound wife, his six ESL kids, and his four at-risk “nephews from Norwalk.”
But in light of the huge welfare handout we’re about to give a group of people who have arguably never done an honest day’s labor in their lives; folks who only sweat on the racquetball court or with their MMA trainer, whose manicured hands have never so much as carried a brick, or stacked a cafeteria tray, or changed a grunty diaper; it seemed only fair that I go statistic hunting. After all, illegal aliens have been our go-to hobgoblin for so long, we kind of take their negative impact for granted. California is bankrupt, and the rest of the country is not far behind. Everyone knows that “illegals” have ruined California’s economy. They even have their own niche on this nifty national debt clock.
Given what’s at stake and the political biases of those doing the reporting, getting reliable information about the number of illegal immigrants in the US and their financial impact is a notoriously tricky task. For the sake of argument, I decided to take the most conservative think-tank figures I could find—which would tend toward higher costs and negative impact than say, the figures advanced by La Raza.
FAIR, (fairus.org) the Federation for American Immigration Reform, is self-described as a conservative “national media watch group that has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986.” That seemed like a good place to start.
According to FAIR’s upper end estimates, the total cost of housing, feeding, educating, providing health care and social services for the 15+ million illegal immigrants in the US in 2008 was… 32 billion dollars.
That’s a lot of money. In California alone the figure approaches 9 billion dollars annually—roughly the amount of deficit being added to the state budget every year.
Note: I purposely exclude the ‘job opportunity’ costs —estimated by some radical anti-immigrant groups to be as high as $200B —because the figure implies that US businesses also saved that same $200 billion in labor costs.
But compare this cost to taxpayers with the $140 freaking billion, that’s BILLION, we are giving, in bonuses alone, to the already handsomely-paid laborers on Wall Street. The estimated average, bonus, is between $140-160K —and that includes handouts to the low-level worker bees; the Swingin’ Dix will rake in millions. But we just shrug and go about our business, because these guys ruined our economy legally.
Is Wall Street’s labor really all that much more valuable to Americans than that of grape pickers and dishwashers? Is what they’ve created, drained, and dumped on us as helpful as a clean bathroom or a well-trimmed oak tree? I’d argue that at least illegal labor does something useful for society and is not in and of itself counter-productive to the survival of the very system that employs it.
Illegal labor may suppress “our” wages, it may even alter the political balance of our legislatures, but it doesn’t crash our retirement funds, or take away our houses, or necessitate selling off our grandkids’ future to pay for it. It is by its very nature a fee-for-service free market economic system. Yes, the model gets skewered when that labor gets sick or decides to import its family, but in essence, employer goes to Home Depot, employer picks up a couple of day workers, employer pays them cash when the day is done. If said day laborer were to take a sledgehammer to the wrong house and knock out all of some unsuspecting homeowner’s windows, the contractor probably would NOT give him a cash bonus and tell him to come back tomorrow to rework the blueprints. If the busboy contaminates the guacamole with typhoid, the public health service would mostly likely NOT give him an extra year’s pay and an office with a view window. And if the chambermaid gets caught stealing guests’ credit card numbers and selling them to her brother-in-law, she would likely go to prison, not get a retention bonus and stock options in the hotel chain.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, et al may argue that they are no longer beholden to the taxpayers because they’ve paid back the TARP funds we lent them to keep their system afloat. But their record profit— realized from those funds— doesn’t mean they’re not still sucking on the public teat. Without our tax money, they would no longer even exist. Nor would their outrageous bonuses.
Calling what they do “a free market economy” is Orwellian.
This is not to belittle the incredible stress under which the average money marketeer or hedge fund director must labor. When you’re gambling with OPM, the stakes are huge—if not life threatening. If you lose, you don’t just lose money, you lose your friends’ money, your associates’ money, often your family, your reputation and your livelihood. The number of failed stockbrokers who return, broken, to Toledo is legion. And IT/mathematicians are a dime a dozen now that NASA has severely downsized its space program. The lifestyle alone is enough to kill you—as anyone forced to date soopermodels night after night can tell you.
But guess what? It’s pretty hard in the middle class, too. And those of us stuck subsidizing both ends of the socio-economic spectrum are tapped out. So why again are we allowing these bonuses to be disbursed? Because they earned them?! Please. Give me 140K and a pencil, and I’ll turn a $15 billion bailout into a $3B profit too. For this year, anyway….
Why we as a society choose to value the creation of nothing over the production of something is a never-ending mystery to me, but at least we could try calling a spade a spade. “Illegal” labor is market capitalism in its purest form, and taxpayer-funded bonuses for Wall Street is socialism bordering on forced confiscation of assets. In the interests of ideological consistency, maybe we should think twice about whom we scapegoat?
by ahansen
Ben, that was one heckuva post. Thanks for writing it. And sign me up for the Ben Fan Club!
I should have made this more clear; I didn’t write this, ahansen did. I started putting the by-line at the bottom because the spammers are using the first parts of every post and then including their bogus links. So the name in the by line was getting associated with spam by the software and then everything with that name gets swept up. Sorry for the confusion.
C’mon Ben, we all know you change into a mask and a pair of tightie-whities and become ahansen to write these posts.
Tighty whities are against ahansen’s religion….
Pay attention to the author’s signature at the bottom…
Oops. My bad.
I agree, it isn’t Ben, but it is an incredible post.
Ladies and Gentlemen ,
I warn you this is gross
http://www.businessinsider.com/20-year-old-buys-home-with-183000-fha-loan-and-just-35-down-2009-10#comment-4ade1b8400000000007ccbbe
Well, was this the “hope and change” everyone wanted?
It is sickening. Our children and country further in debt so that these pigs (who would be bankrupt and out on the street) can feed at the trough again and again.
And they do nothing for society. Their “products and services” are a pox on us.
But Rush Lintball will tell you that you have to pay bonuses to retain quality! C’mon now!
But Rush Lintball is not in charge. It’s the Democrat congress and a Democrat president who are GIVING Goldman et. al. OUR MONEY, allowing them to make their big bucks and pay their big bonuses.
The bonuses are being paid with OUR MONEY.
Thanks Bam. Thanks Dodd and Barney and all the other scum that inhabit capitol hill.
Got Pitchforks?
Bill
Obama paid out the TARP funds? REally?
I can see heaping lots of blame on the Democratic leadership in Congress (no conservative hates those guys as much as true lefties do, believe me). But the TARP was a W. special, and I do mean special, project.
“Well, was this the “hope and change” everyone wanted?”
I thought we need rich people? What happen to that? Ahh…. I get now… Only when required to advance an agenda driven conversation. Just like your hope and change drama…..(queen)
We don’t need rich people for being rich. We need to have an economic system that rewards the one who produces at lower cost, with more usefulness. Socialism/Communism/Fascism cannot do that. I would like to see the day return to where significant people are revered, not famous people.
As someone who voted for the guy, I am… very disappointed. There were actually more Wall Street trials and convictions under BushCo than obama so far (Skilling, Kennie boy, Kozlowski, etc.).
Heads, pigmen win, tails you lose.
Surely you don’t mean under BushCo’s first ten months, says a “fellow” Obama voter.
You wouldn’t want all of that ‘talent’ going to work for EU banks if you restricted the bonuses. Just be thankful Hank Paulson figured out a way to keep our big banks thriving and strong. We all benefit when our system fails to fail. Stop complaining and get back to work so you can pay your bills and fees and taxes. Some people are just never happy. Sheesh!
So $32b/15m is $2133 per.
Sorry, but I’m gonna have to doubt that number. I’m pretty sure the education and medical is more than that per child.
Not sure of the value of this source, but I’d assume it’s in the ballpark.
——————–
At $8,745 per pupil (the average annual cost of K-12 public education in the U.S.) the cost of educating illegals and their children comes to $29 billion ($8,745 times 3.3 million children).
———————-
Even if you bumped it down to $20bb (to say illegals defer some of their own costs for schooling), that still only leaves $12bb for the other 12mm people.
I would assume that I personally cost the government more than $1000 a year, and I’m not illegal.
FAIR is to the furthest “right” of any legitimate anti-immigration lobby. If anything, one would expect them to overstate the case. I, too was shocked at this “low” number in comparison to what is being handed out to the wealthiest among us.
The figures quoted are for illegal immigrants only, not their citizen children. And many of these workers are transient, seasonal, and don’t stick around long enough to use –or are too intimidated to apply for— any social services.
At least that’s what I could figure….
At least that’s what I could figure….
Also, the FAIR number might actually take into account the amount that illegals put into the system via sales taxes, property taxes (either indirectly - rent or directly - ownership), excise taxes (tires for da Chebbie), etc.
I’m just asking for an apples to apples comparision.
Excluding immigrant kids is a sleight of hand as is comparing a net gain of immigrants while only considering the net income of high earners.
I don’t know that you can figure immigration as a right or left or left of center issue. I know conservatives who are anti-illegal immigration and those who are all for their cheap help and handy gardeners etc working off the books. Yet they can have similar positions on every other issue.
Wealth may be the determinant here.
I think it’s deeper than that, Montana. I have wealthy friends who are rabidly anti illegal immigration on principle, and impoverished friends who are equally rabid out of resentment. Illegal immigration violates our sense of fair play and mocks our respect for the rule of law that supposedly governs our Country.
The hard fact (as Mexico found out, and we’re about to,) is that borders are porous—no matter how hard one tries to maintain them. Eventually they morph–even in the face of totalitarian dynasties.
Come on now.
The National Guard could close the southern border in a month.
Be a better use of use our forces than overseas.
I never considered the fact that when you count the total illegal aliens at somewhere around 15Million, you are NOT COUNTING many of their children who according to law are LEGAL. The number of illegal aliens and their legal offspring must be over 30 million by now and growing all the time…
Fecaltime!
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
Goldman Sachs was Obama’s biggest campaign contributor. Take a look at the other Wall Street financial services and media titans who backed his campaign, and it becomes all too apparent whose interests he’s serving - hint: it ain’t Main Street USA. To the dupes who voted for this false harbinger of “change” or the even more appalling McCain/Palin ticket - also bought and paid for by big money interests - you have no right to issue shrill denunciations of the banksters’ depredations, when YOU elected eager accomplices like Barak Obama to do the banksters’ bidding.
Facts don’t matter to party hacks and blind followers, just the way it is. Funny how so many voted for Barry thinking he was going to ’stick’ it to the fat cats. Ain’t gonna happen, just another wind bag lining his pockets. Same old political story over and over and over again, but it is different this time. We are heading to a place we have never been before, DEBT wise. This crowd is on crack.
wmbz,
Believe me, I understand where people are throwing their arms up in disgust over this one. But rather than generalized comments, I think it’s important to make and keep some important distinctions here?
If not for the bailouts, this would be between the board and the shareholders. Yet the lines have become ( temporarily ) blurred. Bringing Balloon Boy, illegals, Demicans and Replocrats into the mix isn’t bringing clarity. It’s just clouding the simple issue of bonuses w/ a false dichotomy.
Sammy,
Being something of an anarchist, I’m ill-at-ease with the administration’s attempts to maintain some sort of economic structure for our country. And certainly by now you must realize I’m no apologist for the likes of GS.
BUT.
Without a viable banking system, there would be no United States. As Treasury, GS and the Fed are essentially one and the same—and finance is, after all, an industry defined by its “connections,” it only makes sense that they would all be working in lock-step to consolidate what’s left of our economy.
Do I approve of their choices? Nope. Do I have any alternative suggestions of how to manage the country’s economy until this bubble has completely deflated? Nope.
Can I fault Obama’s choice of Geithner/Summers to oversee the process and fairly administer it? Well, duh….
Without a viable banking system, there would be no United States. As Treasury, GS and the Fed are essentially one and the same—and finance is, after all, an industry defined by its “connections,” it only makes sense that they would all be working in lock-step to consolidate what’s left of our economy.
“Consolidate” what’s left of our economy? Try “looting” if you want to put this passage into its proper context. And don’t forget to mention the crippling inter-generation debts being foisted onto our children by this vast Ponzi scheme.
I absolutely agree with your assessment that our national treasure has been looted. But once it’s been had and hoarded, what will “they” do with it? It has to go somewhere…unless it never existed in the first place. Then it’s just a matter of managing the fallout.
My opinion is that there is no “is” there. Most of this money is fictional, based on nothing but derivatives. After years and years of make-believe profits, those left holding the hard assets, the “real” estate if you will, (and I don’t mean housing,) will have the wealth. Paper/pixel is only paper/pixel.
“But once it’s been had and hoarded, what will “they” do with it?”
A. Move it outside of the USA to never have to pay taxes on it.
All those $20M houses w/ yachts out back on the river/lake next to the heli-pad are real. The endless cruises, fake/real boob jobs, $500+ a plate dinners w/ the eye candy bimbo sporting $1M in bling that rolled up in the Maserati are real, too. Screw the “banking” system.
Like combo says- cash is king and they are flush w/ it. Papel/pixel me for a while with that “fake” liquidity… I’m tired of hearing that we have to let these thugs take advantage so our system stays intact. BS. Our system is bent because of these guys, they aren’t going to fix it when it has become legal to game it.
(none of the above is directed at you personally ahansen- I’m just venting toward the pigmen- and well your post made it easy! :))
Loved your column. Want to quibble about your implication that the administation rolling over for the Fed, GS, et al is necessary to maintain a “viable banking system”. Had our banking system been allowed to collapse a new one would have popped up almost immediately to take it’s place, even if it had been nothing more than some quasi-bartering system. During the Depression, towns established their own currency just to ride out the times. Sammy is right, all the current administration has done is kept the current corrupt system propped up, enabling the looters to keep paying those outrageous bonuses you rightly denigrate in your column.
Sometimes the foundation becomes so damaged that the only solution is to tear it all down and start all over.
A man after my own heart, Socrates…in all your iterations.
I don’t know. People toss around ‘letting the system fail’ and ’starting over from scratch’ as if these were minor occurrences. Something akin to pulling off a bandaide quickly so as to ‘get it over with’. I think the reality would be far more terrifying and unpredictable. Ever lived through a civil war or mass uprising? I haven’t, and I don’t want to. To think that the good guys would come out on top seems like something we’ve been taught by Hollywood, not reality.
Could we let the banking system fail, resort to a ‘quasi-barter’ economy, and not have widespread violence and unrest? Maybe, maybe not. I’m not so sure I want to find out.
Could we let the banking system fail, resort to a ‘quasi-barter’ economy, and not have widespread violence and unrest? Maybe, maybe not. I’m not so sure I want to find out.
Fortunately or unfortunately, it looks as though we’re all going to find that out, since that’s where we are headed.
Try Argentina’s model..
75% of the people dont keep any money in the banks..it is hidden in light switches around the house ..buried in concrete..
after the banks emptied their accts in 2001 and sent contents of safety boxes to europe..
if you want to buy an apartment you pay cash..no cash..you can borrow but interest rates are 50% per year..
if you earn argentine pesos and save them you convert to dollars..as soon as you can, and when you get 50k of em you buy an apartment or house in provincias..
No need for CDs at banks and loan applications at banks..
No need for banks really, and when you buy an apartment..the seller takes your money buy armed truck to person that is selling his place to him..money doesnt stay in accounts..
And bear in mind that Argentina’s crash occurred within a world of (apparently) steady, sturdy economic superpowers. Might we not have far more dramatic results if those very superpowers went down?
gary,
The Washington Post did a series on the Argentina collapse (in real time, iirc) . It was an amazing read. I still have it.
Awaiting. send link!
I was in Argentina in 2002 right in the middle of the peso devaluations, as well as in Russia in 1998 during the IMF default. One day the dollar bought 8 rubles, and the next it was 38.
Lines out the doors of banks in Moscow, pots and pans being banged in BA, but no riots in either locales.
I will say that both local populaces had a much higher suspicion of banks and government than the average American.
We’ll learn the hard way.
Yeah, we’ll bang pots.
“Soon there will be war. Millions will burn. Millions will perish in sickness and misery. Why does one death matter against so many? Because there is good and there is evil, and evil must be punished. Even in the face of Armageddon I shall not compromise in this. But there are so many deserving of retribution … and there is so little time.”
Rorsach - “The Watchmen”
Rorschach - oops.
lol- You failed his test.
lol- You failed his test.
Oh, thank you.
“To the dupes who voted for this false harbinger of “change” or the even more appalling McCain/Palin ticket - also bought and paid for by big money interests - you have no right to issue shrill denunciations of the banksters’ depredations, when YOU elected eager accomplices like Barak Obama to do the banksters’ bidding.”
Oh, but I wholeheartedly disagree. You’ve been trying to hammer this home almost every day, and it’s an absolutely laughable notion. Every individual who voted for an elected public official has the right to hold them accountable, and to speak up against what they are doing if they feel it’s in conflict with the issues and values which they campaigned on. Get off your “I’m holier than thou because I voted for Ron Paul” soapbox. Nobody loses their right to free speech, to organize, to demonstrate- ever.
Grizzly,
Are you suggesting that BO is going after WS w/ a big ugly whippin’ stick? Not seeing it. I suppose it’s possible there’s a hefty price for them to pay down the road but w/ all this unnecessary guff about HC, I think he’s already moved on.
Did anyone that voted for BO think they’d be having to “organize” 9 months in?
I think that a lot of people who voted for BO thought that once he was in office, they could just sit back and take it easy. Sorry, folks, but this is government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We can’t take it easy. We have to get up off our duffs and DO things.
I think that a lot of people who voted for BO thought that once he was in office, they could just sit back and take it easy.
Never once thought that. In fact, I supposed it would be harder than ever. To many cemented “ideas” and lifestyles are in place. To hard to budge, much less turn over.
I do see that many are and will be much more vocal to the POTUS. I still think that there is a major stinkpile- to put it lightly- to be dug through before anything really can be worked out ethically. As you said, everyone has to roll up their sleeves and bash those idiots in congress,senate who have been there so long. I think voting them all out as in FLipping houses, Flip the ones in office OUT the next election. That’ll show em.
Maybe they will get back in, but just a massive vote against the incumbents would or Should send a message. Or not. They don’t seem to listen to the public anywhoo.
Every individual who voted for an elected public official has the right to hold them accountable, and to speak up against what they are doing if they feel it’s in conflict with the issues and values which they campaigned on. Get off your “I’m holier than thou because I voted for Ron Paul” soapbox.
So you’re feeling betrayed by The Messiah, Grizzley? Welcome to Dupesville, population: You. Like millions of other lemmings you fell for Obama’s pie-in-the-sky campaign rhetoric, when a look at his big-money donors would have been far more revealing. Now that he’s in office, who do you think he’s beholden to - the gullible masses who harkened onto his teleprompter promises, or the fat cats who bankrolled his campaign and succeeded in conning enough dupes like yourself to get him elected? So you and the rest of the disillusioned Messiah worshipers go ahead and try to “hold them accountable” for advancing the agenda of their Wall Street wire-pullers - good luck with that.
The fact that I supported Ron Paul doesn’t make me holier than thou, just smarter and better looking.
I don’t feel “betrayed” by Obama at all. I think it’s obvious who does- an angry, bitter, irrational Sammy Schadenfreude. I still expect some very positive results from this administration- the jury is still out. Much smarter individuals than yourself, on this blog and elsewhere, voted for Obama. That you’re calling all of them lemmings and dupes shows who the dolt really is. I seriously question your intelligence, and your looks, as you regularly try to flaunt them, and most people blessed with those traits let them speak for themselves. Your insecurities are really showing.
I don’t feel “betrayed” by Obama at all. I think it’s obvious who does- an angry, bitter, irrational Sammy Schadenfreude.
On the contrary. I had realistic expectations for Obama, and those have largely been borne out. If anything, he’s been more pragmatic than I expected. He’s certainly more intelligent and reasonable, not to mention likeable, than the smirking chimp he replaced.
Well done Sammy.
I had realistic expectations for Obama, and those have largely been borne out.
Comment by GrizzlyBear
2009-09-14 11:01:53
From everything that’s come out today, it appears as if Obama has become just another patsy of Wall St. Sickening. I thought he’d show more balls.
Honest as I always am, Michael. Where’s the problem in that post, huh?
And of course if we had elected Ron Paul, everything would suddenly be wine and roses. Whatevah… It’s fun to believe in saviors and supermen, but they never exist. (Cue standard joke about the ‘messiah’ Obama, a moniker given to him by the Right, mind you.)
Well BO supporters can “soft sell” and back peddle all they want. It doesn’t change the fact that there is NO “sweeping legislation” confronting the financial industry.
And even though I’m a former Naval Aviator ( so I guess that tells you who “I” voted for? ) I’m more disappointed than all of YOU! Truly, truly disappointed. Stern and harsh reform for those that brought us ‘to’ this point was the very, very least I expected out of (then) candidate BO. And I’m about sick of the carefully orchestrated media manipulation.
It will be interesting to see how he handles the coming storm of one “crisis” after another when the media falls -out- of love w/ him and focuses on “what comes next”. What comes around goes around. Are we vetting Rep. candidates ‘yet’? Only 3 years and 3 mos. to go you know!?
“…the fact that there is NO “sweeping legislation” confronting the financial industry.”
It’s too early to say, DinOr.
And of course if we had elected Ron Paul, everything would suddenly be wine and roses.
No, they wouldn’t be, as anyone but cheap cynics would realize. Our problems are too massive and entrenched for any one individual to overcome. But it would have been a clear signal to the political establishment that ordinary people are onto their swindles and want honest, sincere, competent candidates who put the nation’s interests ahead of the “moneyed interests” Thomas Jefferson warned us about. For the same reason, the elections of Rand Paul and Peter Schiff to the US Senate would send a seismic shock through those corrupt Wall Street marionettes and the entire money-grubbing Republicrat political apparatus. It wouldn’t fix everything overnight, but it would be a long overdue step in the right direction.
I’m not against a little shake up, I’m just not rooting for ’starting over from scratch’. And Schiff isn’t exactly an ‘outsider’ per se, more of an insider contrarian. (Whom I’d vote for, btw.)
As for Obama, I’ll be as disappointed as anyone if he lets the financial industry take a ‘mulligan’. But I think he demonstrated in the campaign that he has a good feel for timing, when to wait and when to make a move. It’s not hard to argue that, in the midst of a worldwide economic meltdown, it’s not the best time to start locking people up and letting the chips fall where they may. If he never changes the Wall Street status quo, then I will join you in disparaging him. But it ain’t over til it’s over. And it’s early yet.
alpha-sloth,
Not… to assign the opinions of say Keef ( at Housing Panic ) to the BO supporters ‘here’ but he banged on that drum since he announced his candidacy! BO was going to clean HOUSE!
In fact he even had a “Jail Watch” for Mozzilo and countless others. I think as we’ve already seen, the timing is now. Like a delinquent acct., each passing day puts more distance between the criminals and their crimes. ( Certainly has worked out for REIC fraudsters? )
That aside, putting together the ‘perfect’ HC package isn’t going to gain him any traction in dealing w/ the finance side. If anything it will only make it more alienated, distant. Sorry folks, it’s ‘done’.
I don’t recall Obama saying he was going to ‘clean house’ on Wall Street. The righties would have had a field day with that. Nor do I recall any sort of ‘Jail Watch’ he may have had for Mozzilo et al. Where was this?
D, Grizzly, alpha, Sammy,
That exchange is why I go to the time and trouble to write this guest post every week. Thank you!
I don’t recall Obama saying he was going to ‘clean house’ on Wall Street. The righties would have had a field day with that. Nor do I recall any sort of ‘Jail Watch’ he may have had for Mozzilo et al. Where was this?
Oooh, I want to know also. I love sensationalism. Links?
ahanson,
Your guest posts are always thoughtful, intelligent, and well-written. While we’re not exactly in lockstep politically, I’ve always respected the way you present your convictions and points of view.
“And even though I’m a former Naval Aviator…”
Is that right? I’m impressed. I bet you’re really disappointed with our leadership.
“(so I guess that tells you who “I” voted for?)”
You know our leader’s offspring don’t serve anymore. Google “Meghan McCain” images for a silicone version of Paris Hilton; nothing but cell phones, parties, shopping trips, etc., while Joe Sixpack gets his 401k looted, and his son’s are placed in harm’s way with Rules of Engagement that increase the danger.
just smarter and better looking.
em. jury is out on that one. For sure.
smarter and better looking
Not properties that can be self-proclaimed, really.
What kind of story are you telling? Epic.
What kind of article are you working on? Seminal.
What can you tell us about your work? Landmark, groundbreaking.
How would you describe your contributions to your field? Monumental.
Nah, not the way it goes, pardner.
Bonuses, Shmonuses. Just leave me alone with my iphone and my apps.
ahansen,
I completely agree with what you are writing. These people that are getting all of this money are incompetent.
I want to extend this argument: I think we are living in a time where America is in a decline. These bonuses/payouts are a symptom of that decline.
This country is now in an Oligarchy. It seems that when these types of systems take over from a previous system, then there will be no relief to the predations that occur. No relief until the Oligarchy crashes, that is. I give you Russia as an example.
People are complaining about “Where is the outrage?” Oh, it’s there all right. There is just nothing that can be done about it. It is the system that is doing this and that is unchangeable - right now.
If it isn’t, I’m all ears about what to do.
Roidy
“These people that are getting all of this money are incompetent.”
Actually, they’re pretty d*mn competent–at stealing.
Problem is, they’re immoral. Sociopaths, every one.
USA’s financial collapse is directly related to its moral collapse.
Great point Bobo! Who was that guy that wrote a book on the 1987 crash and then was mortified when students he lectured used his book as a handbook, rather than a warning?
MBA students aren’t looking to work for 30 bucks an hour, after they spent $120,000 on an Ivy league MBA.
I believe that the book was Barbarians at the Gate. Feel free to correct me on this point. (I’ve already mis-named the author of today’s post — sorry, ahansen — so my accuracy record is less than stellar.)
I would guess Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis.
BTW, Andrew Ross Sorkin will be interviewed on Fresh Air today about his new book, Too Big To Fail.
Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis
And hip in zilker is correct. Here’s Lewis, talking about how his book was used.
Key excerpt from the linked article:
“I had no great agenda, apart from telling what I took to be a remarkable tale, but if you got a few drinks in me and then asked what effect I thought my book would have on the world, I might have said something like, “I hope that college students trying to figure out what to do with their lives will read it and decide that it’s silly to phony it up and abandon their passions to become financiers.” I hoped that some bright kid at, say, Ohio State University who really wanted to be an oceanographer would read my book, spurn the offer from Morgan Stanley, and set out to sea.
“Somehow that message failed to come across. Six months after Liar’s Poker was published, I was knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share about Wall Street. They’d read my book as a how-to manual.”
This quote reminded me of the time I was chatting w/a seven year old in my kitchen. His Mom was a Cornell professor who had loose family ties to the Bush family. I forget what the Dad did. The seven year old told me which of 3 colleges he would be going to, some of our countries most elite. I remember wondering if the child would ever do any self reflection to determine what industry would most fulfill him or if his parents had it all predetermined to which he’d dutifully respond as if there were no other possible option.
******************************
“I hope that college students trying to figure out what to do with their lives will read it and decide that it’s silly to phony it up and abandon their passions to become financiers.” I hoped that some bright kid at, say, Ohio State University who really wanted to be an oceanographer would read my book, spurn the offer from Morgan Stanley, and set out to sea.
“MBA students aren’t looking to work for $30 an hour, after they spent $120,000 on an Ivy League MBA.”
and I’m just waiting for that $120K price to crash too. I believe it will, despite the apparent opportunity to join the Oligarchy. The o. is getting too small to support all the $120K degrees (and the $200K undergrad degrees from the same sorts of places).
Over the last few years we have had many opportunities to formulate in our minds what kind of place this country is becoming.
I’m currently thinking you can bank on a country inhabited mostly by people much like those who were portrayed in the movie “Gummo”.
Just think of those kids in the movie as the current crop of first-time homebuyers and parents and you get the picture.
Meanwhile, a select few mobsters irrevocably and completely gut our Treasury with impunity and arrogance, under the nose of the best Congress money can buy.
Anybody got a fork, I think this turkey’s done.
Reminds me of what my father used to say about Lee Iacocca: “Why’s he being paid so much for being stupid?”
This country is now in an Oligarchy. It seems that when these types of systems take over from a previous system, then there will be no relief to the predations that occur.
Amen to that. It does no good to rail at Wall Street and it’s unearned bonuses, while continuing to vote for and support the corrupt and co-opted Establishment Republicrat duopoly that facilitates the looting by its financial “services” wirepullers.
“Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin . . . . Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again. . . . Take this great power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in. . . . But, if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.”
Josiah Stamp (former president of the Bank of England)
“I give you Russia as an example.”
If (more likely WHEN) that happens we are well and truely F’ed.
Google ‘Dimitry Orlov’ for a trenchant analysis of what would happen here if we suffered a “Russian style” collapse and why we are far less prepared to survive it than even they were.
Ahansen, I just wish you wrote for Vanity Fair or Rolling Stone or even Wired. Your thoughts on these matters are every bit as good.
Please keep it up!
Yes, this is getting to the central issue. Russian became an Oligarchy after it decided not to be the USSR anymore. This happened after the criminals took over. Some of these stayed, some got arrested, some left. In any case, it morphed into an Oligarchy which is still in place.
I know that the Russian voters are still voting, and it’s Parliament is still Parliamenting.
Laws do get passed, and work does get done. Still, the Russian economy is controlled by a gov’t - business crony network that one angers at one’s own peril. The are way too many examples of this to even begin to list here. Yes, the gov’t does work. If it works for the Russian People that is great not required.
We are there with the Russians. Our system was saved. Why? Couldn’t this have been handled better at an earlier time? Why is Ben and Co. claiming that “No one saw this coming.”? Really? We really need to answer these questions as a nation.
We won’t, but we should.
Roidy
We are there with the Russians. Our system was saved. Why? Couldn’t this have been handled better at an earlier time? Why is Ben and Co. claiming that “No one saw this coming.”? Really? We really need to answer these questions as a nation.
We won’t, but we should.
Roidy
————————-
Absolutely agree with you, Roidy.
Thank you, Sleepr. I’ll send them your comments.
Orlov’s “Reinventing Collapse” is indeed one of wittiest analyses I’ve ever read. Laughing out loud while reading apocalyptic economic theory being something of a novelty for me….
A Must-read for all committed HBBers.
Speaking of countries imploding, met a CA RE @a foreclosure condo- he is from Romania. We had a bantering conversation. He thinks this is the land of milk and honey and sees the economy as good. So, of course I asked what country he was from, and well, I surmised as much. It is good for Him.
He does foreclosures and believes Palm Springs is different, much more different than say, Rancho Mirage, PalmDesert etc.
And he also said (consider the source) that people who sold in 05 are coming at him from every direction with cash for housing. He said he doesn’t have enough houses for these people with millions in their pockets. Beware. I gave him the link to HBB. But I don’t think he will look into hbb.
Well what do want to bet those that are getting these checks hope they get them and real soon so they can sprint to the bank and cash them before someone changes their mind?
The Merrill Lynch b’s are still open to debate and we’ve seen a few instances where b’s were given back. There’s also the very real possibility that they’ll be taxed at the 90% rate or something?
But to say that stoopidly awarded b’s on Wall Street ’somehow’ justify people living in this country illegally is all fine and dandy is just plain wrong. Or more more specifically.., “Two wrongs don’t make a right”! Personally, I don’t need either group. That’s just me.
But this is North America. Being ‘productive’ is a dirty word. How come for every engineer in North american companies there are three people with the title ‘manager’ or ‘director’?
Nowadays, people who create nothing get rich on the back of the very few who create.
I am eagerly waiting for the coming depression. When will the tide go out? I have to show off my polka dot bathing suit.
regards
arit (reporting from “Iron Bubble” city, #1 in the world, Vancouver)
Yep and the little management are the ones who get stock options instead of the engineers, for the most part. The managers lie and manipulate while the John Galts’ only recourse is to leave and go where he’s better paid. ESPP is at least a potential way to get what we earn.
“And those of us stuck subsidizing both ends of the socio-economic spectrum are tapped out.”
The bottom end gets all the hate and costs little of the money. Retired public employees and the state and local politicians they own are far more comparable to Wall Street executives. California is going broke due to debt and the retired.
I took the bailout money dispensed over one month a year ago and compared it with all the money spent on “welfare:” AFDC and its successors — over 50 years. Increasing the dollar welfare payments in each year prior to last, to adjust for inflation. They were similar.
It’s clear that what the executive class and the political class need is a big increase in the number of Black people on welfare, since they’ll attract $300 of blame for each dollar of expenditure.
“It’s clear that what the executive class and the political class need is a big increase in the number of Black people on welfare, since they’ll attract $300 of blame for each dollar of expenditure.”
Can you please elaborate? I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at.
Easy, let’s say the welfare rolls go up by 1,000,000 people, because they were contract employees who don’t qualify for unemployment insurance and would otherwise starve. And let’s say the cost of that extra million welfare recipients is $6 billion.
Those million people on welfare can be successfully blamed for $1.8 billion in higher taxes or diminished services and benefits for the rest of us, given our culture, allowing those who benefitted from most of the $1.8 billion to continue to assert they are entitled to all of it. Particuarly if those who receive the $6 billion are immigrants or minorities. It’s always worked before.
That’s why the executive class and political class need to get the welfare rolls up. Welfare recipients are politically efficient.
Let me simplify: They need the poor as scapegoats.
Everone needs to help push the wagon, right?
WT,
I would think that it’s the Middle that “gets all the hate”. If I’m getting something for nothing ( what do “I” care if ‘hate’ me? ) It’s the Middle that takes the hit for “not being generous enough” from the lower end and not ‘productive’ enough from the top.
I’m not cheering the bonuses by any means, but you’re right, if we can’t get a handle on the pub. emp. special interest, none of the rest of this stuff will even matter.
Public employees are another scapegoat.
In California, many of these public employees are employed because of illegal immigrants (think schools, prisons, law enforcement, etc.). If we eliminated the costs associated with illegal immigrants and their (legal/illegal) children, our budget problems would be largely solved.
WHOA such clear thinking CArenter… maybe YOU should be the next governator!
Carenter is not Celebrity enough for CA or any state.
Gotta have some major reagan/arnie type cred. Or that idiot Fred Thompson from Tenn.
Ca renter would be great with those ideas.
Thanks, guys (gals)!
I don’t know where you are going with this either. Black people seem to be becoming a smaller proportion of the population each year, at least certainly not growing. So how is this task to be accomplished?…
I think WT was being wry….
Mexicans will do just as well.
It is very important to reward the crooks. That way, we’ll have even more crooks in the future. Then, once crooks are everywhere and morality is some vague, unimportant concept, the Powers That Be can hurry up with the serious business of turning this nation into a 3rd world hole.
One of the key features of 3rd world pits is that corruption is rampant and considered normal. Once that rotten mentality takes hold, it is almost impossible to reverse the slide, but since it leads to wealth for the ultra-rich - and ensures more peasants that they can run over in their limos - they will work as hard as they can to destroy the concept of right and wrong. A nation of shady grifters is their dream, with their spot at the top of the pyramid scheme.
But don’t worry about this, America - a new season of American Idol will be on soon enough!
Unfortunately, you are probably correct to some extent. Moral Hazzard is running rampant in this country all b/c a few men in high places chose to change the rules of the game in the middle of game for their own ends. This changing of rules really means there are NO RULES. The only thing that matters is how important you seem to be to the survival of the game. Perception is everything with the current corp of decision makers. They will do anything to keep the current status quo alive and well, which is contrary to what capitalism(managed or not)is all about. Without creative distruction capitalism doesn’t work, it just slowly becomes another managed bureacracy ala the old Soviet Union.
When there are effectively no rules then anarchy or some form of non-binding behavior is usually not far off in the distance.
Moral anarchy certainly hasn’t worked out very well since the fall of Saigon.
…I keep telling you it’s Dancing With the Stars. American Idol is so last year.
Also, I have to completely disagree with ANY praise of illegal labor: The importing of illegal is PART OF THE PLAN by the rich - they are not separate things.
The Powers That Be WANT a nation full of crime, poverty, people who cannot communicate, and jobs that pay nothing. They dream of a nation where everyone but them is stuck living 10 people to a trailer with trash all over the front yard. Importing illegals to take jobs, depress wages, and turn once peaceful towns into 3rd world, corrupt dumps is the method to achieve this goal.
So, Wall Street should be blamed for the illegals as well, IMHO.
“…The Powers That Be WANT a nation full of crime, poverty, people who cannot communicate, and jobs that pay nothing.”
Why do you say this?
Angry poor people they can’t communicate with are generally the LAST thing an aristocracy wants in its back yard.
“Angry poor people they can’t communicate with are generally the LAST thing an aristocracy wants in its back yard.”
It seems the fat cats are so caught up in their greed binge that they are losing sight of the future society they are creating for their children.
Hence the emphasis on eliminating the estate tax. They want to exempt their own children from that future.
It’s the only policy favorable to younger generations advanced in the past 30 years, and it only applies to 0.001% of them.
Tell that to Marie Antionette… Just because someone is hungry and angry means nothing. There is many an Aristocracy that is alive and well today, right now, as we speak. Why do the people not overthrow these corrupt governments? These people are certainly angry, poor and unable to communicate with their “betters”. So why no revolution?
Fact is Revolutions as they go seem to be quite rare in relation to the number of governments that oppress their citizens. It takes blood(real blood)to fuel a revolution. I don’t think people self-sacrifice very well. That is until they have nothing left to sacrifice, then maybe…
You don’t even need a Revolution . Everybody take their money out of GS accounts and put it in a smaller company . Everybody cancel
their health insurance until they scream uncle and really reform the system instead of created a plan that gives the fat cats more .
Housing Wizard,
Whoa, there’s one ‘any’ sitting administration just as soon not see repeated more than once!?
Are you listening you idea-stealing MSM’s? Everyone that feels healthy enough to press on for the next year or so, just drop out of your health plan! Those of you held captive by your pre-existing condition feel free to stand pat. We won’t hold it against you. But the rest? Make that call!
I’m serious DinOR . It’s the only way ,fight fire with fire . They got the Politicians in their back pocket. Really ,the only power that people have is to rebel where it shows them that they need us more than we need them . What are the Fat Cats but a bunch of parasites that are skimming off the top .
This is the only way to get them and that is to not play their game . They think they got every one captive to their rigged games ,so just bail . Thats great ,we can just leave them with all the chronic ill people ,the same people that they were going to roll into public programs . I would be willing to do it (in spite of my age ). Shit ,if they lost 100 million health care payers
over night ,and we just left with the high risk ,wow ,wouldn’t that be a power play to get them off their greedy BS .
Any Corrupt company that isn’t protecting you and are just fleecing you ,just bail from and then they will find out just how much they need the majority .
Housing Wizard,
“they need us more than we need them”
( Try explaining that to some people around here though? ) You wouldn’t think that would be necessary as played out against an over abundance of unsold, unoccupied, unwanted homes swelling up in their inventory.
Good old-fashioned Buyer’s Strike! Now what’s that number to Human Resources? But we won’t even seriously entertain that b/c it’s infinitely more fun to blather on about how powerless we are and that we’re just pawns blah, blah, blah.
Please ,don’t anybody take what I’m saying out of context . It’s sick how nut cakes take concepts and twist them . It’s not against the law to not want to do business with a greedy monopoly ,if your willing to go without for a while .Its a risk regarding health care ,but look at how those workers 100 years ago did the same thing to make progress .
Well, I’m a person of action and as I see it people have nothing to lose
because they are taking it all anyway with due time . It’s not illegal to do what I’m suggesting ,its just a risk that you might have a medical problem while your on strike . Or, whats the big deal about transferring your accounts to smaller companies .I have always found that dealing with smaller companies were more pleasant anyway .
They are laughing at how much power they have ,to the point that this is a outright flaunt of the bonus payments . Just because they haven’t raised the taxes in every way they are going to to cover this is no reason to not be mad now .Going up against corruption takes some guts ,no question.,or just stay in fairy tale land and let them do it and trust that they have your best interest at heart .
HW,
Agreed, but what bends me out of shape the most about this latest round of bonuses is that it totally distracts from the REIC sins.
Nearly everyone that bought and/or sold a home from 1997 - 2007 ( May “The Boom” R.I.P ) paid a 6% commission plus all the fees paid out to a very questionable Mortgage Bankers Association. Sure, the bonuses hack me off ( especially since I never ‘got’ one! ) but they pale in comparison to tens of thousands of “developers” living the life and taking their profits UP FRONT on loans now long in default.
I know we try to stay current here, but first things first. Reform REIC NOW!
That idea (abandoning insurance companies en masse) has flashed through my mind…..and immediately after I hear my friends saying to me ok, you first.
Like any revolution, they’ll be the martyrs and they’ll be those that sit on the side and wait to reap the benefits of those that others that do the sacrificing. I can sacrifice my own well being but will I sacrifice my children’s or my spouse’s? Because certainly if I’m in a car accident or if H1N1 took me down hard for a few weeks w/o insurance, the family’s future would never be the same.
I’d like to cut out the insurers by joining local groups who self insure although then you still have the administrator that adds cost. I worked for a company w/little over 200 employees who self insured. They took care of us quite nicely. Course the difference between then and now is cost of care. We need to focus on changing that.
CarrieAnn,
The way our ‘plan’ works these days, we wouldn’t get a whole lot of help w/ something like a swine flu bout ‘anyway’?
Hell, we may begin to see people doing it en masse’ simply b/c they can’t pay their ‘other’ bills, without there being any sort of a concerted effort. Just think about it, what would the insurers do? What ‘could’ they do?
Without, younger healthier “contributors” to subsidize the fragile end, how long would they be able to stay in business?
“Angry poor people they can’t communicate with are generally the LAST thing an aristocracy wants in its back yard.”
The entire history of mankind says this is not true.
I mean, yes, they don’t want them in their back yard, but everything they do ends up creating them anyway. Something about the lack of noblesse oblige.
If you are referring to rational, intelligent aristocracy, you must be thinking of some mythical creature. I’ve read about them in books.
You don’t even need a Revolution . Everybody take their money out of GS accounts and put it in a smaller company . Everybody cancel
their health insurance until they scream uncle and really reform the system instead of created a plan that gives the fat cats more
I just love this idea. I wish (ruminating), but ppl won’t do it en masse.
Agreed. I was just thinking (oops! someone slap me) that the collective “we” at the bottom 80% finally have those fat cats where we want them. Over extended w/ the tide going out (someone get that fat @$$ banker a towel!) now’s the time to twist the knife and forego anything but absolute necessities… Then they’ll play nice and share. Riiiight… They just push a few buttions and $trillions$ appear to take up the slack. “They” will not be denied.
But on the otherhand we have had a pivotal shift in they way J6p views debt (minus the souls the MSM drums up on a daily to influence us to spend). That paradigm shift is here- and there is nothing they can do to change it, bar gifting the po-shmoe to strattle him/herself with more/greater debt. It is not working. Sure, the programs are trotted out as a success, but lo, 2-3 months later it comes out that the program just canibalized future sales and now they are (less) worse off then they were.
Hence: “the new normal”
…it just sucks that the pig-men are getting theirs regardless.
Local folks say they can’t find American born people willing to show up on time and work. They say the legal mexican immigrants show up, are willing to work, and do a good job. Said the Americans show up late, and are lazy. He said the immigrants are quick to start putting money into 401k as well.
Kind of interesting. I don’t doubt it.
Our country has a long history of using foreigners to build things. So do other countries. The world is built this way.
are they referring to WHITE people? I don’t think so.
Local folks say they can’t find American born people willing to show up on time and work
… and why would the so called white people want to clean dishes and toilets - right? The jobs that are done be the illegals!
Oh, you mean the jobs I (a white male) did in college? Yeah, no white person would ever do those jobs- whatever
Exactly. I (a white female) did those jobs, too…as did most of my friends and family members.
The myth that “white people won’t do the work Latinos do” is a total lie.
dj,
You ARE kidding, right?
No i am not…. but then I always had a good work ethic and so did all my GF’s….I have never quit a job in my life, and even sick you show up for work…but then I worked in TV stations and this was expected of you. you just can’t call in sick on short notice…who is there to cover your shift?
———————————————
dj,
You ARE kidding, right?
VaBeyatch,
Probably true. Laura Rowley ( on Yahoo Finance ) kind of echoed my sentiment that the avg. worker has a whole checklist of things they tend to before getting around to participating in their employer’s 401k? Like dude, you’ve been here for two YEARS now!
So I’m not into hatin’ on illegals etc. We have to take accountability for whatever our role in this debacle was. Even though we signed every petition that made the rounds, most of us were afraid to come out publicly and challenge the REIC. ( I know “I” was ) There just wasn’t an upside to it.
Unlike most posters here, I don’t feel “the design” was to tank your company somehow ‘knowing’ there’d be a backstop in place to prop you up? Quite the contrary, if there was… ‘a design’ it was to elevate the American consumer ( shopper/citizen etc. ) to a point where purchases of ALL kinds were possible thru the ‘proper’ use of debt/leverage. There’s no future in being surrounded by broke people as many here contend.
tend to before getting around to participating in their employer’s 401k? Like dude, you’ve been here for two YEARS now!
UNLESS they are matched, they would be far better off from now to their retirement putting into a roth ira. Otherwise, you are limited. Sorely limited.
401k accts. Just another thing the CA/romanian Re person feels that all americans have MATCHED 401ks.
So, I would say the msm has made the majority of americans Clueless. Less than 10% of corps offering 401ks match any part at all. The majority do not match at all.
Well ,slave labor has always been great stuff for the employer ,especially when you can get the government to supplement part of the costs . I won’t dispute for one minute that Mexican workers aren’t hard workers and I have witnessed that myself ,and they also endure long hours in the sun better . But ,any worker in America should not be taken advantage of .The tricks that industry pulls to be able to maintain this shadow world of labor ,much like the shadow world of banking .
“Local folks say they can’t find American born people willing to show up on time and work. They say the legal mexican immigrants show up, are willing to work, and do a good job. Said the Americans show up late, and are lazy. He said the immigrants are quick to start putting money into 401k as well.”
Any state with an agriculture industry needs those Mexicans, legal or not. Effeminate and/or obese American men are simply incapable of satisfying the rigorous labor demands. Even immigrant women in the fields can out work most American men today. No Mexicans, no agribusiness; it’s as simple as that.
Haha, no doubt. That is back breaking work and I think Americans grew too flabby for it a couple generations ago.
“No Mexicans, no agribusiness; it’s as simple as that.”
Hallelujah! All the more reason to tighten our borders. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had *gasp* family farms again? That could actually earn a family a (hard-earned) living?
We need illegals to work the monster fields of agribusiness, eh? I say we’d be better off without both of them.
If agribusiness can’t survive without illegal labor and gov subsidies, then remind me why we have it.
+1
You mean the corporate farmers need those Mexicans to maximize profits, put the small farmer aout of business and have a workforce that won’t rat them out for labor law abuses….
Food prices are very cheap in the U.S. due to a vast network of subsidies, trade agreements, commodities markets, etc., which are complex and beyond a cursory understanding. True cost food would starve-out many Americans without USDA supports.
I just bought some new tires yesterday, the place was hopping (I guess people are finally holding onto their cars beyond 3 years), and most of the grease monkeys were, gasp, anglo, and they were hustling.
I’ve got an acquaintance who’s one of those Anglo mechanics. And he’s a hustling, hard-working kind of guy too.
Know what he likes to do to relax on weekends? He does volunteer construction work for Habitat for Humanity. That’s where I met him. Learned a lot about construction from him too.
It’s also said that if you pay enough, an American will scrub toilets with a toothbrush.
Smart people are not very motivated by a job that doesn’t pay the bills.
Never will be.
So, Wall Street should be blamed for the illegals as well, IMHO.
AMEN.
ok…ahansen…i have been a bit critical of some of your previous post but after this paragraph?
” “Illegal” labor is market capitalism in its purest form, and taxpayer-funded bonuses for Wall Street is socialism bordering on forced confiscation of assets. In the interests of ideological consistency, maybe we should think twice about whom we scapegoat?”
will you marry me?
my libertarian heart missed a beat after reading it.
It’s pretty obvious to me why Republicrat fat cats like to scape goat illegal immigrants. It takes the glare of the media spot light off their own welfare payments.
Corporate America, which owns the GOP, has been one of the main driving forces behind flooding the US with immigrants, illegal and otherwise. Nothing like cheap immigrant labor to cut costs and pad that all-important bottom line, while also providing our overlords with wage-slave nannies and yard boys. As far as the social and economic costs imposed by immigrants and their family members, well, that’s why God created stupid complacent people - so they could pay their taxes while continuing to help perpetuate the Republicrat status quo.
Since you said it so perfectly, Sammy, I’ll just say ‘ditto’ at this time, before going somewhere else.
Don’t wander too far, Oly….
“Don’t wander too far, Oly….”
Kissing the @ss of a “dupe” now, are you Sammy? Oly voted for Obama, as did innumerable other intelligent, entertaining, and witty posters. Is it just because she’s kind of cute and doesn’t challenge you that she gets a pass from your wrath? I know your kind. You change colors with weather, talking out of both sides of your mouth.
Is it just because she’s kind of cute
Hey, Grizz.
First of all, you obviously have never met me, or you would know I am about a zillion times more than ‘kind of’ cute.
That’s first of all.
And second of all, I can administer my own slap-downs, as I f**ck*in’ wish, all by myself, with my adorable little girly arms.
Not sure how telling Oly not to wonder too far constitutes kissing her @ss, but I’ll indulge you. And I have no idea if she is cute or not, so that really doesn’t enter into things either.
I think you missed my whole point about people who vote for BO. My point is not that necessarily that they’re gullible or stupid, though many are both. The last election was a classic Republicrat “lessor of two evils” choice. What I don’t understand is how otherwise intelligent people could have such naive expectations of Obama. His main backers were the financial services sector and George Soros. It should come as no surprise that such patrons don’t give something for nothing, and their agenda is crystal clear: predatory capitalism.
How could any thinking person could expect Obama to “clean up” Wall Street, when Wall Street OWNS him? When people who backed Obama express surprise that he is following the agenda dictated to him by the banksters, corporate cartels and media/entertainment moguls who bankrolled him, rather than following up on the promises he made to common people on the campaign trail, I have to wonder, what planet do you live on? People who had ample opportunity to see who was bankrolling and supporting Obama’s campaign, have no excuse to profess themselves shocked or disappointed by his pandering to Wall Street. Those who do fit the classic definitions of “dupes,” as they clearly voted based on a contrived, stage-managed perception rather than verifiable realities.
I know your kind. You change colors with weather, talking out of both sides of your mouth.
I’ve been posting in here since 2004. The regulars in here, especially the old-school bunch from the early days, might not always have the nicest things to say about me, but could set you straight on the “changes colors with the weather” comment. Better yet, maybe you can provide examples of my alleged “talking out of both sides of my mouth.”
Relax, Oly. My post had nothing to do with defending you. Furthermore, I’ll be the judge of your cuteness, not you.
I didn’t miss a thing, Sammy. You’ve been hurling insults at every person who has voted for Obama ever since the election, all the while parading around like your’e some sort of f***ing genius for voting for Ron Paul. It’s tired, and boring. Get back to some of your humorous stuff and I’ll get back to enjoying your posts.
You change colors with weather, talking out of both sides of your mouth.
Griz, I’ve seen you talking out of both sides of your mouth, too. It’s not too hard to find you using terms like “Shrub” and “McSame” yet there’s this comment from you:
Comment by GrizzlyBear
2009-09-10 22:52:04
Calling President Obama “The Messiah”, and “Barry”, really weakens your argument and shows quite a bit of immaturity and bitterness on your part.
I’m guessing when you use those terms you’re immature and bitter?
I’d certainly never deny using the terms “Shrub”, or “McSame”, though it’s not something I’ve made a habit of, but why wouldn’t you at least provide the evidence? You went to all that trouble to research my posts (massive hard on for me, apparently) yet you didn’t get the goods? That’s pathetic, Michael.
Is there any place left where government isn’t corrupt, and the ruling class isn’t trying to turn it into another 3rd world country? Because that’s where I want to move, if such a nation exists. Canada, maybe?
Zimbabwe is probably less corrupt, but the shopping isn’t as good.
“Canada, maybe?”
From a Canadian, maybe not. Pick a US problem, Canada has something similar. We didn’t have the blantantly stupid mortgages, but we had insidious 0 down, 40 year ams, with 5 year terms (can you say interest rate sensitive?) All most all of the new mortgages require CHMC insurance, which means risk is born by the government. High debt loads for individuals, businesses and govt. We’ve haven’t gone as far with govt bailouts, but the crisis is still pending. I think our CEOs take in much less pay, so maybe that’s a real difference?
I know a couple of places, but I sure as hell ain’t tellin’. Not on a public board anyway.
antarctica? the moon? oh yeah, both! north dakota!
HAHA- ya sure yabetcha
donchaknow!
One thing that rattles my cage is when people take on illegal aliens.
To me they are the hardest working people in America. Period.
They put in far more that they take out. Compare their working hours to the scum at Goldman Sachs.
But what really gets me riled, is the venomous spew normally comes out of the mouths of people who, due to girth, cannot bend over and retrieve a dropped quarter.
There is a direct correlation between bating illegals and girth size.
Man, just this morning I got called out to hospital at the ungodly hour of 4 a.m. The only people I saw hanging out lined up on the pavement were illegals, getting ready for another days work.
These guys deserve a medal.
Chicken or the egg? T’were not for them, you could argue that most everything would pay well enough native born people would actually do the work.
And yes, their “girth” would be significantly less. Then there’s that little bit about “Only willing to do the -crimes- Americans won’t do themselves”.
Boy you don’t know nuthin do ya. Read up on the Bracero program from the late 1930s and forward. Doing the labor for cheap so the US citizen could get their produce cheap.
In other words, they did all the harvesting because anglos would want larger pay, ergo- corporate profit.
“…There is a direct correlation between bating illegals and girth size.”
An intriguing notion, Otto that bears further investigation….
girth of what?
Not sure what your job is at the hospital, but nurses are being imported since they will work for wages RNs and LVNs won’t.
You’ll be able to give them that medal you think they deserve but don’t really want to give them (otherwise you would) soon enough.
As a native USA born nurse I know I am working for the exact wages due the the Union rules, but that is whole another can of worms.
“But what really gets me riled, is the venomous spew normally comes out of the mouths of people who, due to girth, cannot bend over and retrieve a dropped quarter.”
Yeah, those illegals are some super in shape, svelte people- maybe you should come to Long Beach and watch them waddle up and down the street, pushing their strollers full of anchor babies. Oh, and before you feel too sorry for them- try and get one of those guys to work for you for less than 15.00 an hour- they’ll tell you to go pound sand. Not bad wages considering they are totally unskilled labor, earning that money tax free. Of course, I’m sure they file taxes at the end of the year to make sure they contribute more than they take out. What BS…
Elanor
Nope, sorry. Canada is mimicking the US as best as it can.
We have the same bailouts, “insaner” bubbles and lower incomes than you.
And we have stuff like this, a lot:
Fast Cat Fiasco
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Ferry_Scandal
The “”Olympics”" will be even a greater spending orgy….
regards
I was at a motorcycle race over the weekend and “the star spangled banner” was played. Everyone in the garage stopped what they were doing and put his hand on his chest and faced the flag. It is getting hard for me to be patriotic with all of the nonsense and surreal misrepresentation of the people our government is currently propagating. I now have an understanding for war protestors and Bush-haters that was harder to see at the time. Is anybody else experiencing such feelings and if so, what should we be inclined to do about it? Thank you.
No -
I have spent more than my share of time overseas. After having experienced the best that western Europe has to offer, I still wouldn’t trade it for life in these United States.
and Canada is too damn cold. They did give us SCTV, thank you canookies.
I had the opportunity to visit Canada in August. I was with my fun-loving, free-spirited Aunt Jean, and she decided to play a little game with me.
She was driving the car, and whenever we came to an intersection, Jean asked me, “Which way?” I was to respond with the direction I wanted to see us go next.
The fun part about this? We were in Quebec. And, although both of us can read French, we don’t speak it. Which would have made stopping and asking for directions really interesting. Fortunately, we didn’t get lost.
I noticed that, compared to the northern U.S., the Canadian border region looked quite prosperous. We didn’t pass through any major cities, but the small towns seemed full of contented people. We both concluded that the current recession has walloped the States a lot harder than Canada.
The above notwithstanding, we were both glad to get back across the border so we could be home again in the States. It’s our place, even though it’s not perfect.
I still wouldn’t trade it for life in these United States.
You’re saying you like it there better?
I’d move to Canada (Western BC, to be exact) if I could. I may still be able to, but the issue is in doubt.
There is something profoundly creepy about the whole face-the-flag-and-cover-your-heart thing. And something profoundly moving….
And something profoundly moving….
I’m glad you added that part, because I was getting ready to commence shouting.
The dichotomy there is the stuff of great literature. I’ll just settle for getting misty-eyed.
I just change the words.
…and to the Republic for which it used to stand…
When, though? Under the Articles of Confederation? When we had slavery? When was this ‘perfect’ (or hell-of-a-lot-better) Republic we should pledge allegiance to? What years? The evil, post-war FDR socialist years?
Pre-TARP.
“But compare this cost to taxpayers with the $140 freaking billion, that’s BILLION, we are giving, in bonuses alone, to the already handsomely-paid laborers on Wall Street. The estimated average, bonus, is between $140-160K —and that includes handouts to the low-level worker bees; the Swingin’ Dix will rake in millions. But we just shrug and go about our business, because these guys ruined our economy legally.”
How do you know they did it legally? Just because there is no high enough legal authority which is not fully captured by Wall Street to take action against them does not make what they did legal.
And for those who would accuse me of being casual about the law, I don’t mean to suggest here that anything illegal was done; perhaps everything Wall Street does to earn its massive bonuses and paychecks is perfectly, Constitutionally legal. One should not summarily rule out the possibility of illegality, though. Doing so enables the Bernie Madoffs and Ken Lays of the world to get away with massive swindles.
You’re right, Prof. I should have put “legally” in quotation marks.
Just because it can be finagled or rationalized, doesn’t mean it’s “moral.”
I am pretty sure the firms we are talking about can afford to hire attorneys who can make pretty much everything they do perfectly legal in the eyes* of the judicial system.
* Unless Judge Rakoff is involved
“We have to pay them this much to retain their talent.” Leaving aside the fact that is was their “talent” that got us INTO this mess, what else are they going to do? IMHO there’s little reason to believe that if you cut the bonus of the the top players from 10 mil to 2 mil they’d turn around and find somebody ELSE willing to pay their grossly inflated salary. And if they did, do you think that their 2 mil replacement would somehow be any worse?
I have a better idea: Outsource our Wall Street bankers to Iraq and Afghanistan, to start Islamic banking operations abroad. If they do for these countries what they have done for America, the War on Terror will be won without the need for any further bloodshed.
Geez Mr. Bear, you sounding more & more like George Carlin every day!
Carlin’s material falls under one of three self-described categories: “the little world” (observational humor), “the big world” (social commentary), and the peculiarities of the English Language (euphemisms, doublespeak, business jargon); all sharing the overall theme of (in his words) humanity’s “bullshit”, which might include murder, genocide, war, rape, corruption, religion and other aspects of human civilization. He was known for mixing observational humour with larger, social commentary. His delivery frequently treated these subjects in a misanthropic and nihilistic fashion, such as in his statement during the Life is Worth Losing show:
“I look at it this way… For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers… so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it’s natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse.”
Yes, George Carlin is a recipient of a “Life Time” Eeyore Award…
Sorry, forgot this:
Carlin also gave special attention to prominent topics in American and Western Culture, such as obsession with fame and celebrity, consumerism, Christianity, political alienation, corporate control, hypocrisy, child raising, fast food diet, news stations, self-help publications, patriotism, sexual taboos, certain uses of technology and surveillance, and the pro-life position, among many others.
He professed a hearty schadenfreude in watching the rich spectrum of humanity slowly self-destruct, in his estimation, of its own design, saying, “When you’re born, you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front-row seat.”
Ain’t that the truth.
Illegals are a supplement to business and that is why the problem has never been addressed . The government supplements the health care and all the other expenses . The balance scales have gone so far to tilt in favor of Employers and the other chosen ones that it’s a ship sinker. If one took the time to go back and look at all the laws that have be enacted in the last 15 years that favor BIg Business, or employers ,or Wall Street/Banks ,you would be appalled . The lobbying paid off ,but it created a Scale of Justice that is so tilted that it is really to fall off the table and crash to the grown .
Why did anybody think that the elite would not take advantage of the bailouts ? The lobbyist write the laws for God sakes and have insider knowledge of what the trend will be on top of everything else . I think its about time that the middle class do something like everybody cancel their Health Insurance Policy so the Power Brokers can see who needs who .I think effective forms of “strikes” might be the way to loosen the
hold that the lobbying corruption has taken . I know it would entail
some discomfort ,but it would be effective . On a mass level if people withdrew funds from GS and put the money into smaller investment firms ,that would show them . We should tell them the way its going be rather than them telling us . The Powers think money talks ,so deal in a way that you make money talk . The trick is to get this form of “strike” organized . Given this same course ,these greedy mad-hatters are going to sink the ship ,while they make sure only they have life boats .
HW,
I’m onboard w/ you as far as “getting organized”! What can make this a slam-dunk is that people will be able to do what they do best, nothing.
Just call down to HR, tell them *not to take a payroll ded. for your medical plan ( oh and cancel that dingleberry dental ‘plan’ too while we’re at it ) and head back to the break room or whatever.
Without scods of heaping tall ins. premiums coming in every payday from HEALTHY people, their whole little system falls apart! We can/can’t do this people!
Thats a real problem, actually DinOr, that part of the payment is from your Employer This is another way that a monopoly is created by
not giving you your pay if you don’t want to apply it toward health insurance . The monopoly is evil and these people have the nerve to
talk about capitalism and a free market . But , I just think that the
lobbyist will keep getting more and more absurd until they expect 21 k a year from a family of 4 to cover them ,but they have to prove they have no pre=existing . I take that back ,they will deny them coverage after the fact when they find out they had a cold when they were 24 .
HW,
Excellent point. Years ago I worked w/ a guy that fully paid off his house in like 14 years. All on blue collar wages. “Wes” really changed the way I looked at not only money, but the relationship we all have w/ our employers.
He was fond of saying “You can’t ‘eat’ benefits” any time mgmt. touted “all the wonderful stuff they were doing for us”. In our case, the company ‘paid’ for your medical coverage ( read reduced wages ) so it would have been foolish to decline them.
Why is it every player on a pro team has a different contract/income but we’d be laughed out of the interview if we said “I’ll take cash over your lame benefits”?
Medicare for everyone! (I borrowed that line from a Harvard
Doctor .)
Look at how much money the insurance companies get from car insurance because it was forced on everyone . I have seem cheap ass liability insurance double in the last 10 years . I’m not saying that it wasn’t a good idea for everyone who drives a car to be mandated to have insurance ,but they raise the costs yearly . Also how about how homeowners insurance has skyrocketed ,yet you coverage is getting more and more exclusions on items they know cost them ,plus they force you to be over insured . It’s become a racket ,no didn’t than the Wall Street Ponzi schemes on leveraging money that created a mighty fake bubble .
I have been watching these power brokers for a long time now and I am convinced that they are so bad faith and so in bed with the Politicians and Wall Street (insurance money goes to Wall Street )that the public isn’t getting value for their money . I am a firm believer in getting value for the dollar ,but if you have a monopoly ,they can do anything they want to you . I have lives in America when the balance of power was more reasonable and far more capitalistic.
Love your posts, Wiz. You are dead-on about the insurance/finance companies running our government and writing the laws.
Folks, why not stop whining about this are start messing things up?
Put up a website that is a hit list that starts to list out the name, personal information (address, etc) and bonus information of the people that work for these companies. Make them squirm. Host it off-shore and with multiple mirrors.
EXACTLY! Why hasn’t someone already done this? Not my particular area of expertise unfortunately but I’ll trade my design and carpentry skills for some deft HTML work
Hmmmm. I feel my pitchfork futures gaining value as I write this.
Your design and carpentry skills are worth far, far more than any Wall Streeter’s “talent”, IMO.
Thanks!
I’ve always been the kind of person who likes to actually creat THINGS. As a kid I used to build huge and elaborate (though structurally questionable) tree houses, then I would build the furniture for them!, then I would get bored and move on to the next tree ;). Drove my parents nuts.
As an adult I essentially built my own house, (plumbing and electrical included though please dont tell the Baltimore City building department that! I fix my own cars, grow my own veggies, basically try to be as self reliant as possible but the human parasites at both ends of the scale really drive me nuts.
So, why isn’t Fox News organizing one of their tea bagger protests regarding these outrageous Wall Street bonuses that we are all paying for? And they don’t even have to make up this s$it.
FU, SU
‘Cause you don’t rat out your friends?
I know I’m posting this way down here, but this whole thing leads me to a question…..
Forgive me if I’m misunderstanding all of this (and perhaps someone can shed light on my folly), but I am sensing a really oddball scam here…. So, if I’m understanding this correctly these big investment banks (well, bank holding companies or whatever the hell they are called now) are borrowing money from the fed at 0%, then they are using this money to buy bonds (treasuries), and making a percent or two on the money they borrowed. The obvious problem here being they are lending the money back essentially to the guy they borrowed it from……… So it would be like me lending a friend 20$ (at 0% interest), then borrowing back that 20$ from said friend and paying him 2% for the privilege of having my own money back (while he pockets the 2%).
I can’t be right here am I? Are they seriously pocketing taxpayer money as interest by lending us back our own money and raking in record profits as a result? Am I totally off-base here? I’ve got to be wrong (my rational side of the old noggin is sending off signal flares), can someone a bit more wise in this area shed some light for me?
Yes you have it — a guaranteed free return, borrowing from and lend to the federal government, all at the expense of savers.
It isn’t oddball or even a scam — it’s standard issue central banking in response to a banking crisis.
What IS a scam is that these government generated profits are being used to pay bonuses, not rebuild reserves. Particularly since the profits aren’t sustainable. Once the Fed raises interest rates to stop inflation, if it does so, the value of those government bonds will fall, and the cost of financing the banks will rise.
“What IS a scam is that these government generated profits are being used to pay bonuses, not rebuild reserves. Particularly since the profits aren’t sustainable.”
Who cares if it is a scam; it’s perfectly legal.
Legal… Immoral… Rediculous…
I am reminded of a tv show I saw when I was much younger (can’t remember which). Anyway, in it the main character hatches a money making scam by taking advantage of an ice cream shop’s “You’ll love it or double your money back guarantee!”.
He of course “hated” the first scoop, and the next 15 or so as well(the shopkeep protested “but you already tried it and didnt like it” to which the kid explained “maybe I’ll love it if I try another scoop”). Even as a young lad I can clearly remember thinking pulling this stunt in a real ice cream parlor would get you thrown out on your rear…. He ended up putting the shop out of business (and learned a lesson, gave back the money and everything was hunky-dory).
This is sorta like that, only the shopkeep puts up with it with a smile and there’s no happy ending.
You know, come to think of it, many of my childhood “life lessons” have left me ill-prepared for today’s reality. Honor your obligations and your word? HA! You should always tell the truth? HAHA! Cheaters never win? BAHAHAHAHAHA. Thou shalt not steal? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Treat others as you would like to be treated? LOL. Buy a house you can afford, or you will lose it to forclosure? BLEAH. If it sounds too good to be true it IS? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
I’m changing the way I raise my 5 month old son from here on out. From now on every life lesson I give him will be valid for today’s world.
Today’s lesson: Son, if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you just lost your best customer.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll teach him about enron-style accounting practices, or how to run a ponzi scheme.
Re: “Today’s lesson: Son, if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you just lost your best customer.”
LMAO! It’s a dog eat dog world out there…
They’re “restocking.” These guys are brokers, not producers, remember?
“Is Wall Street’s labor really all that much more valuable to Americans than that of grape pickers and dishwashers? Is what they’ve created, drained, and dumped on us as helpful as a clean bathroom or a well-trimmed oak tree?”
No, it’s not. The inequality when it comes to pay is criminal. The biggest sacrifice anyone makes when they go to work is the giving away of their time. Low wage workers say goodbye to their kids for sometimes 60 hours per week in order to barely scrape by. They have no retirement, and have given everything they have- blood, sweat, and tears just to survive. Conversely, some CEO hardly works, and when he does it’s from the golf course, or the friendly comforts of an office suite with hundreds of thousands of dollars of creature comforts. He may not add a bit of value at all to the company he is “running”, or in many instances, “ruining”, but he will be rewarded with tens if not hundreds of millions in pay and bonuses. The system is completely broken.
Grizz,
You don’t have to “go all the way to the TOP!” to find inequalities. My sales mgr. made like $500k for being a totally useless doofus. Travel, trips, “gentlemen’s clubs”, everything the best! Dude was a total booze-hound.
Well, most of us were considering ourselves ‘very’ fortunate to have made $40k in 2002. Yet again though, it’s a large part of the reason I left that twisted scene.
I can remember when my dad worked for a company with stoopid sales people. Dad was a research engineer. As in, the sort who ran the R&D part of the company. He was fond of saying that if it wasn’t for his brains, those guys in sales wouldn’t have jobs.
Sorry man, but they decided a long time ago that your time isn’t worth much if the job is such that a lot of people can do it.
Is it fair? Maybe not, but it’s also not fair that i’m balding in a world that prizes hair.
The_Overdog,
It’s worse than just that. Even if you truly -are- a one-in-a-million type employee, it’s become standard fare to berate you on a daily basis hammering you time and again ‘telling’ you; “Anyone can do your job!”
At first you (obviously) strenuously object! Fighting it tooth and nail every step of the way. Then defending what you do as being truly unique becomes more exhausting than the job itself. They wear on you. They peck away at you. Then one day you’re flirting w/ death and call in sick. While you were out, it was decided that b/c (1) rookie “got lucky” (once) that ‘anyone’ can do what your job!
You hardly have to be operating a leaf blower for a living to be told you’re expendable.
I’m not buying it. The jobs that most CEO’s hold have less to do with actual knowledge and skill than they do luck and connections. A lot of their $45k per year subordinates are just as qualified. It’s the pay scale that’s woefully imbalanced.
PS- Sorry about the hair. Glad I still have mine.
When I was young I was a musician. Nothing spectacular, but talented by small town standards. Since I was young, I thought that since I was good enough to play the things I heard on the radio, I must be good enough to make a living at it. Experience later taught me that while talent was a good thing to have, that wasn’t what got you on the radio. Lesson learned, I thought.
As an adult I saw what CEOs did and thought “I could do that”. Went and got an MBA. Turned out I had to learn the same lesson again.
Hear, hear!
And I’m speaking as someone who volunteers at a radio station here in Tucson. I’ve spoken with more than a few people who want to be on KXCI, either as a deejay or as a musician.
In very few cases, they actually follow through by:
1. Sending a CD or a MySpace link to the station. If we’re going to air your band, we kind of want to hear what you sound like first.
2. Signing up for the deejay course, then attending all the classes, and, get this, listening carefully to the instructors’ advice and following it.
Here I agree Slim, people today have no idea what a dj does
But in radio now its all computerized, before those darn things each record and commercial had to be cued up and YOU had to press all the buttons, switches ON TIME and made sure all the volume controls were set right to create the finished on air product. I doubt anyone could fathom working under those primitive conditions today.
DJ was a tenant of mine once. Best tenant I ever had. Paid on time, kept great hrs=quiet at night. Massively great collection of LPs etc. Was very organized. Condo clean as a whistle, cept for tub. Otherwise, wish he hadn’t moved on.
Next tenant, not so lucky, not always on time, and wanted their deposit back stating those pot burns in the carpet 10′ away from the fireplace- which hadn’t been used- were due to fireplace. Heck smoke em if you got em, just don’t tell me those holes were there before you got there. Pfffft.
Potheads!
Grizz,
While I admire your high ideals, I never actually ‘met’ the Prez of any corp. “I” worked for. And usually only met the the Regional Sales Director ( or whatever ) once or twice.
This ‘hammering’ is usually done by a very small minded local manager that feels threatened every time you walk into the room. I guess I never had the luxury of worrying about what ‘the man’ was making.
The system just isn’t designed that way. If you don’t feel you’re being treated and compensated fairly, you can talk to the regional sup. any time you ‘like’. He in turn will call your branch mgr. behind your back and tell him he has a ‘whiner’ on his hands. If you think life was ‘tough’ before.., stick around. And that’s my point, if you want to make sure your income doesn’t start to lose air, you have to fight and fight and fight. Or leave.
Well, I guess I agree that the payscale is imbalanced.
However, I think it’s wrong to discount the value of ‘connections’ and building them. It’s a skill and a relatively rare one.
And as one who has done everything from clean muck from stock tanks to planting crops to building houses to developing software to managing large projects, I’m saying the managing large projects is the toughest. I never had any trouble sleeping after cleaning a stock tank, and it never went home with me.
And then a large corporation is bigger than any project I’ve ever done, so I probably have more sympathy for CEOs and upper level mgmt than most here, and less sympathy for the engineers. : )
“Illegal labor may suppress “our” wages, it may even alter the political balance of our legislatures, but it doesn’t crash our retirement funds, or take away our houses, or necessitate selling off our grandkids’ future to pay for it.”
I could not disagree more with this naive statement. When the government allows corporations to skirt labor laws and feast on illegal alien labor at the expense of jobs for US citizens, it does all of the above and more. When the drywaller who was paid by the piece and supported his family nicely is out of a job because the contractor he used to work for is using illegal Mexican labor at less than minimum wage, he loses his standard of living which means his house, his retirement, and perhaps the future of his children as they are replaceable too. Journeyman carpenters who made good livings with solid, respectable skills have been replaced by illegal aliens doing slapdash work. The houses didn’t get cheaper to represent the new substandard quality, the profit margins just got bigger for the greedy execs. You know- the Bob Tolls and friends who made a killing during the bubble.
GrizzlyBear… Good points ..Same with all the outsourcing and setting up manufacturing bases in other countries and favorable trade balances to FAT CATS . It’s all about increasing the Fat Cats bottom line ,while the lower to upper middle class eats it .
These mad-hatters need to be stopped . They can get to the Politicians ,so there has to be another way to defeat them . I posted what the way is up above .
I’ve seen quite a bit of slapdash work done by illegals here in AZ. Most, but not all, come from Mexico, and, sorry to say, I think that a lot of the sloppiness is due to their not being properly trained.
On the other side of the coin, we have plenty of crackerjack Mexican-American tradespeople here in Tucson. Remember that water line replacement project I told you about a few months ago? The company owner, the master plumber, and the plumber’s helper were all Mexican-American, and I’d hire them again in a heartbeat. Those guys took pride in their work, and I’ve recommended them to several other people.
I was so hoping you’d bring this up.
(Here Grizzly, Grizzly, Grizzly….)
Not saying our inconsistent and convoluted system of trade is fair or just or even rational; and government intervention in one arena often translates into concentric circles of subjugation in in others. But what tariff boosters tend to forget is that commerce and trade have no borders anymore. “American” business interests span the globe and interact in a system that has no boundaries or national allegiance. By limiting importation of “foreign” goods, you are necessarily affecting American investors and American businesses— and ultimately your own paycheck.
That Danish pork, for example, is fed with American corn. And inoculated with American-developed vaccine. And shipped on American-owned transport. And sold by American specialty grocers. To American restaurant owners. Etc.
Like it or not, the value of a pair of jeans is what China charges for a pair of jeans. The value of an IT engineer is what India pays an IT engineer.
Our economy is in the process of seeking its own level as we come to realize this hard truth, and our American standard of living is adjusting accordingly. An unpleasant truth, but a truth nonetheless.
Last night HBO had a wonderful documentary on the rag trade and the demise of the garment workers’ union. Interviewee after interviewee praised the ILGWU and the power of union in raising their standard of living over the years. Union boss after union boss bemoaned the loss of American jobs to cheaper labor overseas. Not one of them made the connection between the overvaluation of their labor, the unsustainable cost of their contracts and entitlements vis a vis the market, and the fact that they had unionized themselves out of an industry.
> the overvaluation of their labor
A large part of it has been due to the overvaluation of the dollar, which was manufactured by Chinese and other governments to protect and nurture their own industuries. The unions deserve only a small part of the blame.
Not a matter of blame. Just the way things work out in the scheme of things. Happened to the auto industry. Is happening to health insurance industry. Will likely happen to the public employees industry….
The problem with your thesis (that American workers are too expensive) is that these same “free market” types want asset prices to continually rise. Since they are fighting deflation at every turn, we can’t expect workers to reduce their wages.
Additionally, U.S. workers probably wouldn’t mind fair trade where we trade with other countries who have similar environmental and labor protection policies in place. Why do we need to compete on price alone? Why not compete on quality?
Personally, I’d much rather pay twice the price for a product made in the USA — by a worker who is paid enough to provide a good living for his/her family — than pay half for a piece of junk that is going to break down within a few months.
We are fortunate enough to be fairly self-sustaining in this country. We do not need to join in the race to the bottom.
I agree because then they have enough money to buy the thing I want to sell. So it works back and forth.
Otherwise, if ppl don’t get paid a living wage, they will all shop at wallys, forever swirling the spiral downward.
Our economy is in the process of seeking its own level as we come to realize this hard truth, and our American standard of living is adjusting accordingly.
This adjustment would be much less difficult if housing were also allowed to adjust accordingly. How long will we have to pay 1st world housing prices on 3rd world wages?
Free trade only works when the parties playing are on the same field- how much cheaper could we manufacture or grow stuff if we didn’t have those pesky environmental laws, minimum wage laws, could use whatever pesticide we wanted to and didn’t worry about the lead content of the paint in our toys? But at least that cr@p is cheap, right?
You are wrong on this one ahanson. The unions didn’t pay themselves out of business, the execs did.
Unions brought us workers rights, which have been declining in lockstep with unions influence. You like the weekends? 8 hours days? Safe working conditions? Pensions? Guess who got those for you? Guess why it’s going away.
So how did the execs price themselves out of business? The ever pressing need for stock value. People seem to conveniently forget that little fact.
And have you tried living on less than $25K a year in today’s economy? Let me know how that ghetto apt where you park your 10 yo import compact (that’s been broken into twice which is why you can’t get that dental work done that you need) which needs transmission work or you can’t get to your job, goes for ya. Now try that with a family.
$50K for a family of four is just getting by these days. Was it the unions that caused the hidden double digit inflation? No. It was the execs and BODs gouging out and manipulating, often illegally, a higher and higher return on their stock options while cutting every corner imaginable and simultaneously raising prices.
How in the world can you say the unions caused their own problems when current events have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt who the real crooks are?
How?
Ask some furloughed California prison guards, teachers, firefighters….
“…And have you tried living on less than $25K a year in today’s economy? ”
Yes. Considerably less than that for a considerable number of years. It’s been quite the challenge, and there’s no way I could have done it when I had a family to care for.
Please don’t misunderstand. I think what is happening to the US is, for a great many of us, a tragedy of the highest order. Adapting to the changes we are going to encounter will be beyond a lot of people’s psychological capacity, and I don’t believe we’ll ever go back to the level of consumption we saw at the beginning of the century.
But I hate the smug, authoritarian attitude of the union officials I’ve have to deal with in my life almost as much as the petty authority of the government bureaucrats who have plagued me. I see unions as just another layer of control and special interest between me and my money, and although I believe they have their place, I’m really not fond of coercion and intimidation in the national marketplace—regardless of who is employing them.
I see unions as just another layer of control and special interest between me and my money, and although I believe they have their place, I’m really not fond of coercion and intimidation in the national marketplace—regardless of who is employing them.
————————-
So who or what is supposed to counterbalance the coercion and intimidation of a unilaterally powerful corporate interest/employer?
We need unions, and the non-union employees need to understand that **they** have benefitted greatly from the work done by union workers.
IMHO, lumping union workers into the same basket as corporate/financial thieves is misguided. If not for the few remaining unions, we wouldn’t even have what’s left of the middle class today — unions are the only thing holding up the working/middle class. Let’s direct our anger at the real problem.
True ….Ca. Renter . It always amazes me how people can’t see
how the Power Brokers distorted the balance of power between
the Employer and the Employee . Look how United declared BK and reduced the workers pensions by 30% . Look at how many Companies underfunded their pension plans and now they expect the Government Insurance to pick up the costs . Who else gets
these sort of supplements from Government .? True ,that it seems that the only Unions that are going to be standing are the Government Unions . Look at how WalMart busts any attempt for those workers to become unionized . In the Private sector they want to get rid of all Unions ,and not honor their obligations . It’s the new way for Big Business in America to steal from the worker . It was Corporate Americas idea to expand to a world labor force and dump their obligations .They created a monopoly in which in order to compete you had to go Global . What Country would be stupid enough to give away all their jobs and still expect that
their Country could survive at a standard of living that was
long standing in America and the envy of the World .
I just can’t believe how people are so brainwashed into giving it all away …..Why …so Wall Street can sell stock in Companies that make to much profit .
so Wall Street can sell stock in Companies that make to much profit .
On paper and of only paper. Not products. Paper.
Couldn’t agree more.
And folks who weren’t union, non management, lower management were retired and just got notice their health benefits were taken away for good, Dec 31. Way to go corp. Way to not vote in a union to protect yourselves non union emps. Way to believe the bs the corp told you.
Not that the corps can’t do it anyway with corps owning the supremes and all gov.
Sorry but this is just plain stupid. There is no universal law of trade. If we don’t want to trade with countries where our people are mostly hurt then we don’t have to. We prospered a long time with high tariffs. We only gave up on this when our government decided it wanted to be an empire and management no longer considered itself part of the same community as the workers.
So you want to punish most Americans to benefit a few others? Limit our freedom of choice? Force us to purchase shoddy, expensive, merchandise when far superior, cheaper choices abound elsewhere around the world? Especially when those other choices benefit American shareholders, subcontractors, brokers, sales outlets?
You’re only allowed to work for one company for the rest of your days regardless of whether or not people want to buy those dandy typewriters or the tape cassettes you make? Really?
Sounds like Soviet Russia in the 60’s.
Can’t buy those mythical “cheaper, superior” choices without money, can you?
Did you know that the biggest reason for the slide in American mfg quality during the 60s and 70 was the failure of companies to UPDATE their assembly lines and processes? They tried to blame it on the unions (which was true in a few instances) but the fact of the matter was they were too cheap.
Back in the seventies an investment banker was touring a Ford Pinto manufacturing facility, and he noted that the assembly line workers were driving Datsuns and Toyotas.
Comment by ahansen
2009-10-20 20:35:46
So you want to punish most Americans to benefit a few others? Limit our freedom of choice? Force us to purchase shoddy, expensive, merchandise when far superior, cheaper choices abound elsewhere around the world? Especially when those other choices benefit American shareholders, subcontractors, brokers, sales outlets?
————————
What freedom of choice? Just try to find an American made product these days, and see how difficult it’s become.
And since when did the Chinese produce superior products to ours? What once was well-built and lasted twenty years is now made in China and lasts three years (but it’s half the price, so we must be “saving money,” right?).
“We only gave up on this when our government decided it wanted to be an empire and management no longer considered itself part of the same community as the workers.”
American should continue to “import” items from China…it’s simply the best “ethical” and “bidness” thing to do. So, we get poisoned pet food & toothpaste and a “few other items”…”smart people” can mitigate this problem, they avoid buying at Wal-Fart… items that can be detrimental to their health.
Many forms of bail-outs are taking place ,and its all sneaky stuff that goes over the radar of the public .The public than goes into a outrage when they find out that the crooks are getting paid a lot for making hay while the getting is good . Another trick they employ is talking a subject to death ,so the public tires of it and they just end up moving on because the damage is done anyway . I have never seen so many Congress/Senate hearings in which they spend weeks talking about the discovery of a unfair or corrupt practice ,
they get up on their chairs and complain about it ,than when the next bill comes up it’s passed in favor of the Fat Cats .
“I have never seen so many Congress/Senate hearings in which they spend weeks talking about the discovery of a unfair or corrupt practice,
they get up on their chairs and complain about it,…”
Read J K Galbraith’s A Short History of Financial Euphoria if you have not yet done so. This is a normal part of the aftermath of a collapsed bubble…
“…under the radar.” The correct term is “under the radar.”
The end is near?? gulp
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/americas-soul-is-lost-and-collapse-is-inevitable-2009-10-20?pagenumber=1
Collapse? No, but contraction certainly. Forget the “growth” mantra.
I don’t agree that nothing can be done about the track this train is on .
Regulated capitalism is a good concept ,so are proper tariffs . Look at all the deregulation and favorable laws Big Business/Wall Street?Banks got in the last 10 to 15 years . This can all be reversed .
Just because a bunch of greedy punks got into power doesn’t mean that
they can’t be ousted and the systems can’t be changed . These people are such mad-hatters and they are so blind they can’t see . To flaunt these excessive bonuses ,while many people have loss their nest eggs is
appalling . As usual the Politicians will talk and talk about reform while the elite loot the coffers . I remember when the United States use to break up monopolies .
Extraction by E-Verification will cause–expedited ATTRITION–without huge expenditures, without forced deportation. Agents of ICE only need to mobilize a large force of Auditors to investigate employer I-9 records. Especially if informants within, are on the payroll, having discovered suspicious individuals working there? Being responsive that there are severe monetary risks or even prison, for employing illegal employees? We surely need exemplary court sentences for companies that hire illegal labor. So when unable to support themselves as jobs are no longer available, they will leave by their own accord. NOW IS THE TIME TO COMMAND OUR RETICENT SENATE & CONGRESSMAN TO IMPLEMENT E-VERIFY PERMANENTLY FOR EVERYBODY IN THE WORKPLACE AT 202-224-3121. Also investigate the prestigious public watchdog legal group at JUDICIAL WATCH relating too sleaze and corruption in–ALL–government. CAPSWEB will explain to you about the risk of OVERPOPULATION.
If we think about the monetary consequences of another AMNESTY, it is unbelievably stagger the mind. Not only will it legalize somewhere between 20 and 30 million more people, but it will attract millions of despondent people from across the border and other impoverished nation of the world. We are informed by politicians that it will be an impossible task to deport the huge numbers of illegal entrants already in the United States. But E-Verify can and will exclude illegal immigrants from the job market as it’s available to every business freely on the Internet. There should be no excuse for not using this immigration enforcement tool? Out government is failing to protect our borders or even the interior enforcement of our nation.
So. How do we go about extracting the banksters?
Replace Mexican with Italian, Irish or Jew and you have the same disgusting, nativist and just plain racist anti-immigrant, arguments from early1900s. Give it up.
I completely understand the anger of displaced citizens when aliens, illegal or not, compete and gain employment in the job marketplace.
Low-paying part-time jobs in Southern California often require bilingual skills.
I do not apply for those jobs, but my assessment is that my skills in Spanish (studied for 4 years) is far better than thee average level of competence in English for the legak or illegal applicants.
Not racist, just unemployed and overqualified.
Happy Harvest Season!!!
Feel free to invite all these illegal immigrants (and their gangster punk kids with the spray paint cans) to live in YOUR neighborhood, and live on YOUR dime, Eddie.
It is quite interesting that when the so called “illegals” were “stealing” jobs that were predominantly held by African Americans as early as late 80s, I never heard the usual cries that they were talking jobs away from Americans. As a matter of fact most white businesses (and individuals) to this day prefer to employ them over fellow Americans. Most of the businesses that employ the “illegals” are owned by middle class Americans. These people that hang around Home depots end up working in small projects or small businesses and not at midsize or large firms. The blaming of immigrants during hard economic times is not unique to US. Immigrants are always the easy target when things turn sour. Past examples are Turks in Germany, African immigrants in South Africa, Jews in Germany (1930s), Chinese in Indonesia (60s), Asian immigrants in UK, Lebanese in West Africa ………. and so on. But the reality is that very few countries managed to deal decisively with “the problem of immigrants” once they identified it as the source of their problem. Germany did the final solution thing which brought about the collapse of Third Reich. Dictator Id Amin of Uganda expelled the Asian business class which resulted in the collapse of a vibrant, if not the best economy in Africa at that time. Turkey is the odd country. It successfully expelled the Armenian population (who were not actually immigrants but were seen as such) by genocide. The rest of the other countries often go back to bash their immigrants whenever they cannot find anyone else to blame.
Better not to mix immigration questions with genocide (Jews, Armenians).
Bank of America deal had White House support
By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Top economic advisers to President Obama signed off on a deal to protect Bank of America from losses incurred by its purchase of failed Wall Street firm Merrill Lynch a month before the new administration took office, according to Bank of America documents.
The documents, describing internal discussions at the bank in late 2008, assert that executives were told that incoming National Economic Council Director Lawrence H. Summers and incoming Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner had endorsed the deal to provide new guarantees to Bank of America.
…
Geez, all this… “America is puke”…well, at least there is a “Plan B”: “The Chinese-India-Muslim model to “copy”.
I’m taking Mr. Cole to Angels-Yankees game via the train…I hope the train isn’t repo’d for the return trip. (Hwy thinks maybe he should have just bought a “one way” ticket)
Years and years of deregulation in the name of the economy, ‘free markets’ and other BS, buzzwords and lies developed by the wealthy elite to separate you from what is rightfully yours succeeded beyond all measure. Why any wage slave is blind to this fact is a mystery.
A mystery? I guess you never went to public school?
Then there’s the most scientifically advanced psyho warfare ever created by mankind thing we call “mass media.”
It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
I guess the Power Brokers didn’t plan on the Americans running out of money . Interesting how Big Business thinks it can raise prices without
raising incomes .
What will end up happening is that people will just drop out of health insurance as they find they can’t eat while paying costs like that . People will end up not buying their products and they will sink into a low standard of living .
It was a great moral hazard that these greedy mad-hatters weren’t busted and purged when the meltdown occurred . The problem right now is that the lobbyist are spending big bucks to brainwash the public again ,to the point that the public is begging to be fleeced .Look at how people were brainwashed into the real estate Ponzi scheme .and leverage and debt was wealth .
I think there still might be time to save America .
PBS alan greenspan special is on NOW. 8pm.
If you want to watch a really good program ,go to FRONTLINE and key in the special called THE WARNING .Its a 55 minute special that is very interesting ………..that’s all I’m going to say .
It was Excellent. really good and they DID KNOW IT WAS COMING as far back as 1997. Liars.
And again, the white wealthy connected male was quick to disparage the one person who was ethical and told them it was a house of cards.
I remember watching them grill Brooksley Born and being as PO’d as when they went after Anita Hill. Woman had some serious chickones.
Boy didn’t she. I was so proud of her. I want to be HER friend.
Smart woman.
I too saw it in real time and was incensed then but now it really reverberated.
I wanted to write her name in the post, but was afraid I was mispelling it, and you knwo (hehehe) how I am about spelling.
Brooksley Born. fab.
The bottom line is that the credit default swap market was basically insurance in which they didn’t have the reserves to pay . According to the
Special the Banks didn’t know what the hell they were doing and Wall Street
got them in to this high yield bet of the credit default market . We gave AIG 160 billion to pay off their credit default swaps ,and they are still
stalling on regulations of this fake Casino bet market in which they didn’t even have the money to back their bets …..Wall Street is evil .
NYTIMES
Wednesday.
Bob Hebert.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
We’ve spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government — while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they’ve wanted.
And we still don’t seem to have learned the proper lessons. We’ve allowed so many people to fall into the terrible abyss of unemployment that no one — not the Obama administration, not the labor unions and most certainly no one in the Republican Party — has a clue about how to put them back to work.
Meanwhile, Wall Street is living it up. I’m amazed at how passive the population has remained in the face of this sustained outrage.
Even as tens of millions of working Americans are struggling to hang onto their jobs and keep a roof over their families’ heads, the wise guys of Wall Street are licking their fat-cat chops over yet another round of obscene multibillion-dollar bonuses — this time thanks to the bailout billions that were sent their way by Uncle Sam, with very little in the way of strings attached.
Nevermind that the economy remains deeply troubled. As The Times pointed out on Saturday, much of Wall Street “is minting money.”
Call it déjà voodoo. I wrote a column that ran three days before Christmas in 2007 that focused on the deeply disturbing disconnect between Wall Streeters harvesting a record crop of bonuses — billions on top of billions — while working families were having a very hard time making ends meet.
We would later learn that December 2007 was the very month that the Great Recession began. I wrote in that column: “Even as the Wall Streeters are high-fiving and ordering up record shipments of Champagne and caviar, the American dream is on life support.”
So we had an orgy of bonuses just as the recession was taking hold and now another orgy (with taxpayers as the enablers) that is nothing short of an arrogantly pointed finger in the eye of everyone who suffered, and continues to suffer, in this downturn.
Look up ” Bucket shops” and see how this has been done before, but at least then they had the sense to prohibit them. Allowing them again also made them immune from prosecution. Pretty nifty huh? Amazing how easy criminal activity is when you have the law makers in your pocket.
That’s interesting. To me, a bucket shop is UK usage for what we would call airline ticket consolidators.
Look at how the power brokers crushed Born ,and they went to Congress
to make it happen .It’s been 5 years since the meltdown started and
the Power Brokers are still successful in keeping the status quo as far as
new regulations goes . In spite of the unregulated world of banking and credit default swaps that helped in bringing down the financial systems ,(because they didn’t have the reserves to pay of their Casino bets ) these
crooks think that they should be able to make money off their unregulated
Casino bets .The fact that the public doesn’t even know what a credit default swap is goes a long way toward making it possible for these creeps to continue with their money generating highly leveraged Casino games .
I still think laws were broken in that how can you get away with offering insurance and not have the reserves to pay . There must be some law against this and they are avoiding that all those contracts would need to be voided .Its very strange what is going on here and it defies logic .
Defies logic. True.
Did anyone catch in the Special that they have 600 trillion of these
credit default swaps outstanding ?
Yes. Frightening. As Brooksley suggested.
Actually much of the credit default swaps were written with both side knowing there were no reserves to cover the bets. They were written to get around banking regulations. As long as the loans were “covered” by these swaps the banks could go to higher leverage levels than the regulations allowed since the covered loans were risk free. Everybody was in on the secret.
Thank you so much for confronting this nonsense. When they were making money hand over fist, it was because of their great skill and intelligence. When they are losing money hand over fist, we must maintain their pay levels or lose the only ones who can save the situation.
What balderdash. Heads must roll, roll, roll. Time for new blood. The bonus system started as a way for the street to easily cut pay in bad times while still retaining workers who knew that they would make bank when things picked up.
For top people, the elevators only goes one way. No risk at all. Are their options undewater? No problem, we’ll reprice them. Did the government have to bail out their tottering institutions ruined by malfeasance? Not only will they not suffer, but they’ll be paid retention bonuses.
Time to see some of that vaunted performance we were all sold.
““Illegal” labor is market capitalism in its purest form, and taxpayer-funded bonuses for Wall Street is socialism bordering on forced confiscation of assets.”
Brilliant.
I’ve started to wonder if states and fed combined nowadays make a major part of GNP, thus making US officially semi-socialist country, like so many in EU.