Questions of the day
A $500,000 pay cap on bailed-out executives is nice, but if you can't balance your company's books without a handout from hard-working taxpayers, how about even less than that? Half a million dollars can keep 10 families of four knee-deep in beer and Skittles for a year. That's still plenty to take home in public gratitude for helping to wreck our economy. Bailed-out Citigroup paid out $4 billion this year to executives who helped it lose $19 billion.-
In respect to President Obama's proposed economic stimulus package, how in the world have minority Republicans still been capable of framing the debate and dictating the terms of this deal?
An answer: Obama was eager to accommodate them, added a bunch of imprudent tax cuts that sent the message that it was a good idea, and yet he still can't get their support. Now the GOP has convinced the public that the stimulus is really about Democratic overspending and pork. A survey released Wednesday by Rasmussen Reports found that only 37% of Americans now favor the stimulus package. Yep, that post-partisan approach is off to a rousing start.
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Shouldn't the feds be flipping steroid users in their pursuit of actual predators (like real estate scammers) instead of the other way around? Are we chasing real criminals or headlines?
(Note: Since the story linked above went down in Baltimore, one has to wonder if the Bigbie wiretap wasn't improperly connected through the investigation of the serial killer preying on the city's homeless. Send an email if you don't get this reference.)
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What do you think of this list?
Most yards passing in a Super Bowl--
1) Kurt Warner, StL, 2000-- 414
2) Kurt Warner, Ari, 2009-- 377
3) Kurt Warner, StL, 2002-- 365
4) Joe Montana, SF, 1989-- 357
If Warner fails to make the NFL Hall-of-Fame, the biggest injustice of it will be that nearly all of the time he lost during his career-- the late start, the clipboard holding, etc.-- was due to coaches and teams not believing in his ability.
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Which is your favorite Michael Phelps joke? Vote in the comments box.
a) Jeff Schultz, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Just wondering: Is the water in Michael Phelps' bong chlorinated?"
or
b) Jimmy Kimmel, ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live": "If you had a party, it seems to me the last person you want to hit the bong is Michael Phelps, with the lung capacity of a humpback whale."
posted by CM @ 8:28 AM
5 Comments:
The Kimmel joke hands down.
Kimmel.
I can't defend the executive payouts of the last several years (with the caveat that I also don't criticize the executives for taking them - I plan on being in a position to earn millions of dollars in a single year during my career). But to cap pay at 500K is a political move, not a good business move. You want the best people in the world running these banks, and you won't get that for 500K. And, by the way, 500K wouldn't provide skittles and beer for more than 2 families in NYC.
GO CUBS!!
These institutions had the "best" and look at what those greedy motherfu$kers did to those formerly great American institutions. These assholes are all from the Ivy League, where evry damn student graduates with a 4.0 g.p.a and then they hire other Ivy League assholes with the obligatory 4.0 g.p.a.
Goldman Sachs which has so many fuc*ing political connections it doesn't seem possible to be any where near "legal". These pricks had an average bonus of 600K in 2007, "BONUS"... NOT BASE SALARY. It was straight up fraud. These pricks do not want anything to do with you if are not a "Leaguer" or hold an MBA from Stanford.
Anon,
I'm not sure if your beef is with the people running the banks or the Ivy League schools. I don't know if the people that attend Ivy League schools are any smarter, but I know they dominate the upper echelon's of corporate America, and I would love it if my daughters would get accepted to one of those schools when the time comes.
I got rejected by Harvard, Wharton, and Columbia when I was trying to get into grad school. But, I don't hold any grudge against those schools or people that did get into them. I can still be quite successful with an MBA from Indiana.
You blame the greed in the executive suite for our problems, but let's lay some of the blame on the greed of the average American who bought that house that they really couldn't afford. You can pretty it up with a word like aspirations, but really it was greed - wanting something they hadn't earned.
The real crux of the recession is that consumers overstretched themselves and this is the painful process called deleveraging. I'm not sure it could have been avoided with the path we were heading down over the last ~15 years. The consumer's balance sheet got out of whack and there is not a quick way to fix it. That is why we are going through this shitstorm, not because people at Goldman Sachs got 600K bonuses (after making hundreds of millions for their clients).
"I'm not sure if your beef is with the people running the banks or the Ivy League schools"
They are synonymous.
"after making hundreds of millions for their clients"
Technically you are correct, but Goldman Sachs employees earned about $660,000 (before bonus) in 2007 – which is roughly half the profit they generated. That is one of the lowest profit per employee averages in corporate america. Like I said, they basically just pay(ed) themselves.
Goldman Sachs’ 2007 bonus pool was about $20 billion. The budget for the U.S. National Science Foundation was about $6 billion. How’s that for misallocation of capital?
"You blame the greed in the executive suite for our problems, but let's lay some of the blame on the greed of the average American"
I agree 100%
"The real crux of the recession is that consumers overstretched themselves and this is the painful process called deleveraging"
I disagree on this point. What really got the ball rolling to recession was the Wall Street mortgage related side bets, etc, That panicked every market world wide.
and a while back that 4 dollar gas did not help.
Dave, it sounds like you want to be a member of a club that does not want you. Yet somehow you and I will be paying our hard earned money to these utter scumbags.
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