2009 archive
Conspicuous Consumption in Greenwich, Connecticut 0
Well, not any more.
And not in Fairfield, Wilton, and Trumbull either.
H/T Alison for the second link.
Pay for Performance 0
D-Day takes a look at the corporate bonus culture:
The reasoning in the corporate boardrooms is actually pretty simpleminded:
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1. I am the CEO/CFO/whatever.
2. I therefore must be a Master of the Universe.
3. I therefore am entitled to All that I Can Get.
They believe this reasoning even as the facts–all those arrows slanting downward to the right on all those charts–the facts of the business show that they couldn’t tie someone in a game of tic-tac-toe without phenomenal luck and chicanery.
Those who complain about an “entitlement society” are looking in the wrong direction. The sense of entitlement is not walking on the streets, not pumping gas in service stations nor building product in factories, not helping customers on the sales floor, not in the Bushie breadlines.
The sense of entitlement is in empty suits in fancy offices on the top floors of all those buildings in the center of town.
“When the Lights Go on, All over the World . . .” 0
John Cole. Read the last paragraph. It’s called “vicarious learning.”
Doddering 0
From FactCheck dot org:
The public record shows Dodd authored an amendment that would have prevented “any bonus” being paid to top executives of firms getting bailout money. It was the White House and the Treasury Department that insisted Dodd’s amendment be watered down to apply only to bonuses paid under agreements signed in the past five weeks. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has taken public responsibility for that.
We lay out the full story in our Analysis sectiom.
(Yeah, I know the category for the post is a redundancy.)
Nowhere To Go, Nothing To Do 0
Bloomberg (emphasis added):
(snip)
Initial claims for jobless benefits surged last month and through the week ended March 7, topping 600,000 each week. Today the Labor Department said the number of Americans collecting jobless benefits swelled to a record 5.47 million in the first week of March, indicating that former employees are unable to find new work as companies continue to cut costs.
No Room at the End 0
The Sunday Breakfast Mission is overwhelmed by ReagoBushonomics (emphasis added):
But that capacity is far outstripped by the need. In January and February alone, the shelter had to turn away 103 men, 76 women and 73 children — more people than went through its doors in all of 2008.
It’s the only shelter in Sussex County that accepts children, said Program Director Michele Stewart.
The office gets 15 to 20 calls a day, and most get the same answer.
“We don’t have space,” Morole says flatly, and sadly. “The way the economy has turned, it has increased. The kind of help people want has changed.”
The Bastardization of Discourse 0
Glomarization mounts a protest against action based on ignorance.
Aside: As her post implies, folks who do not understand what happened then cannot get it right now.
It’s called “history.”
Mythbuster 1
“We’ve become the poster child for excess. … We are going to dispel this myth about a $4 cup of coffee,” Schultz said near the end of his 70-minute presentation to shareholders. In fact, he added, most of the company’s beverages retail for less than $4.
How about the truth that it attains mediocrity as a standard?
Second Thoughts (Updated) 0
I’m starting to regret that at one time I was a Dodd guy because of his stand on Bushie spying on American citizens.
Addendum:
Delaware Liberal has information that seems to indicate Dodd was set up.
More Airplane 0
“Won’t you try . . . ?”
“Mistakes Were Made” 1
AIG’s Edward Liddy mealy-mouths at the Guardian.
Doesn’t any suit have the guts to say, “We (or ‘I’) screwed up,” instead of the holy-moly-we-were-somehow-innocent-victims-of-some-faceless-entity formulation, “Mistakes were made”?
Try saying “mistakes were made” to the traffic cop the next time one pulls you over and asks, “Do you know why I pulled you over?”
Rarely do we seem to see someone in public life who takes responsibility.
Not just idiots. Irresponsible self-excusing idiots powerless to stop the sweeping forces of incompetence and destruction which they unleash.
Barney Frank calls out the crapola (via TPM):
Furrfu.
Pay for Performance 0
Skippy analyzes the Villagers, whom he defines as
The Villagers are the keepers of what Duncan refers to as “Broderism.”
Further on in the post, he remembers when NBC News asked him and other bloggers to a “summit”:
First, throughout last year’s presidential election campaign, reporters fawned all over John McCain like they were in love, replaying again and again the Village script that McCain was a maverick, ignoring how McCain had voted with Bush time and again on an agenda that was disastrous for the United States, and mentioning, frequently, how McCain had thrown a barbecue for the press. The barbecue: that’s the key.
Second, though my recollection is a teensy bit fuzzy, rendering the precise quote perhaps off by a few words, the gist is accurate, so I recall for you a quote from a book I used to own. If I get the time, I’ll see if I can find someone with a copy of the book and look it up. The book in question is David Halberstam’s “The Summer of ’49”, which describes the 1949 American League pennant race between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. At one point Halberstam quotes Joe DiMaggio as he expresses his disgust with sports writers. “Look at ’em, ” DiMaggio says contemptuously, “I can buy any one of them for a five dollar steak and a bottle of wine,” meaning he could take a reporter to dinner and that’s all it would take to get that reported (sic) on his side. A five dollar steak and a bottle of wine. Feed them a meal.
That’s what the shrimp was about. That’s why NBC thought we would all be bought off and become their BFFs, because if you put a shrimp platter out for the NBC news crew, you buy them forever and they become your BFFs. When those disparate stories converged in my mind, I understood how you can own the Villagers: buy them dinner. That’s all you have to do. Buy them dinner. They are as cheaply bought as that.
I jokingly said to someone yesterday at DL that “I have always wanted to be an Authorized Personnel.”
The Villagers consider themselves “Authorized Personnel,” for the rest of us cannot be admitted through the doors they freely enter.
Now, I have been an “Authorized Personnel” allowed to walk through the door bearing the sign, “Authorized Personnel Only.”
The Villagers revel in their “Authorized” status and forget that “Authorized Personnel” is nothing more than a fancy word for “employees.”
“Pretty Please” 6
Liddy said he would never have approved the compensation contracts, which were signed before he took over last year, and he’s asked employees to “do the right thing” on their bonuses.
As I heard someone point out in a podcast I listened to today, it is not uncommon for companies in trouble to approach creditors and ask to have debt obligations renegotiated. (Go to the website and search for March 17, 2009–it’s Hour Two–or listen here (MP3).
And it is certainly not uncommon for Repulsicans to demand that working persons give up their rights.
So why is it so difficult for overpaid slugs who have helped destroy the world economy to give up a few millions of their bonuses?
Oh.
Yeah.
I forget. They are rich (or will be after they get their bonuses).
They are therefore virtuous.
Aside: Office building. For sale. Cheap. Suitable for Masters of the Universe, their heirs, and pretenders.
Please Stop the Lies 0
John Cole surveys a new batch.