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tazzygirl -> RE: Another thing about wages in the US (8/11/2009 3:02:30 PM)
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However, taking all the representations made here as representative of the attitudes of working people - the hell with them! I also see that it is the government's responsibility to take care of those people. They are entitled to "free" health care, homes they can't afford, and food left on their doorstep every day. Fine - let them seek those things from their ideal nanny government.
The people seem to be clamoring for it. They detest me, and all the, by definition, evil Corporate owners, executive, and "wealthy stockholders". I guess the not so wealthy stockholders, representing in the majority senior citizens and yes - even some who work for evil corporations contributing to their 401k, just have to suffer for their mistake of trying to invest for their retirement.
First, im not saying a company shouldnt make a healthy profit. Without it, the business would soon close. But even you have to agree there is a line between healthy and what the insurance companies, auto companies and investment firms have done.
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Retreat in Style
The first cause for concern came well before the formal bonus season. It was the much-reported $440,000 junket last September to the Tuscan-style St. Regis resort at Dana Point, California, enjoyed by 70 high-performing employees of insurance giant A.I.G. The retreat, which included $23,000 for spa charges, was held less than a week after the company was promised its first $85 billion from a tarp fund separate from the one helping the banks.
In his office at 120 Broadway, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo started strategizing with his deputy counselor, Benjamin Lawsky, about how to stop what he would soon call “unwarranted and outrageous expenditures” by A.I.G. Civil charges could be brought, he decided—and would, if A.I.G. persisted in exploiting taxpayers. And so began a campaign on Cuomo’s part to rein in A.I.G. that would broaden to include nine tarp-infused financial firms and their top officers’ lingering hopes for bonus season.
Summoning A.I.G.’s new C.E.O., Edward Liddy, to his office, Cuomo demanded an immediate end to junkets. He threatened the company with legal action for “fraudulent conveyances”: engaging in business transactions without sufficient capital on hand. A.I.G.’s legal team saw that as a stretch, as the law seemed more relevant to bankruptcy proceedings, and A.I.G., thanks to taxpayer money, wasn’t bankrupt. But Liddy got the point and agreed to no more junkets.
Liddy had started at A.I.G. only a month before. He’d come from Allstate, and, at the Treasury Department’s request, had agreed to work for $1 a year, at least until the company’s fortunes improved. His predecessor was the problem. A.I.G. had let Martin Sullivan go last June after three quarters of hideous losses totaling $18 billion—but had not fired him. Its directors had reasoned Sullivan wasn’t responsible for the mountains of credit-default swaps—unregulated insurance-like contracts—that A.I.G. had written on mortgage-backed securities and had to make good on now that the supposedly risk-free securities had tanked. So Sullivan had been free to leave with a package that included a $4 million pro-rated bonus, $15 million in severance, and other benefits then valued at $28 million, for a total of $47 million.
As for Joseph Cassano, the executive whose Financial Products division was responsible for all those C.D.S.’s, he’d left in February with a $1-million-a-month consulting contract (since discontinued) and $69 million in deferred compensation. Only six months before, in a widely reported quote, Cassano had said of the $441 billion portfolio of C.D.S.’s he’d bet would not default, “It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario with any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing one dollar in any of those transactions.” He is reported to have since repaired to his three-story town house in London’s Knightsbridge district, on a bucolic square with a private garden, and his lawyer declined to respond to an e-mail from Vanity Fair
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/03/wall-street-bonuses200903
Hmmm.. yeah... bonuses paid while people were laid off. sure sounds like a well run company that cares. so while you sit there and complain about how we arent bending over to kiss the asses of corporate america while it rapes and berates us, remember who it is that makes you those profits day in and day out. oh, and to be sure, those with 401K's arent too fucking happy either.
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For us, the evil 'Scrooge-like' mercenaries for personal profit; should the resulting tax and regulation become too cumbersome and I and my ilk can't maintain my "Billion Dollar Bonus" (BTW - Would love to know the name of 1 corporate executive who received a bonus of 1 Billion dollars that's been used.) I close the company; creating more people happy to have their lives and livelihood in the hands of the government.
i would like to know who said a single executive got a billion dollars. wasnt me.
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