The taxpayers are shelling out $700 billion, and $70billion is going to executive bonuses, 10% for the mathematically disinclined.
Sorry, but outside of the cafeteria worker and custodian, none of these folks deserve a bonus.
I know that they will make claims about motivation, but how about something like, I don’t know, the threat of arrest and imprisonment?
Well it looks like everyone’s favorite faux Dem and serial sexual harrasser has just had his wife file for divorce.
This seat will be going to a ‘Phant this cycle
A special thanks goes out to Rahm Emmanuel, who recruited him and got him to change parties to run, and scared off the real Democrat running for the nomination in 2006.
I did not come up with bon mot, rather it was John Carney at Clusterstock did. He was talking about James H. Lambright, former head of the Export-Import Bank, who has been tapped to serve as interim Chief Investment Officer for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
Mr. Carney notes that we should be concerned, and not just because we have, “Bald midwestern ex-Wall Streeter running our banking system.”
In his time at the Ex-Im Bank, it appears that his main accomplishment was to remove it from congressional scrutiny by making it self financing.
In English this means that Congress has no control, but is still liable for the bill if the Ex-Im bank sees losses.
And now they want him to be in charge of investments at TARP….Lovely.
I’ve always wondered what he did after he shuttered his daily The Far Side job, and now we know that he got a job at S&P, because, when cows are at the center of malfeasance, Gary Larson will be there:
Official #1: Btw (by the way) that deal is ridiculous.
Official #2: I know right…model def (definitely) does not capture half the risk.
Official #1: We should not be rating it.
Official #2: We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.
(emphasis mine)
Gary Larson rules our world.
A South Korean financial analyst, Han Sang-choon, was fired for saying that much of the losses people have experienced in the market are the result of greed:
“I reckon people haven’t cashed in their funds because of personal greed and expectations (of profits),” he told an investor, according to quotes from the Friday TV show that appeared widely in South Korean media.
There is a saying, “In Wall Street, the Bears make money, and the Bulls make money, and the Pigs lose.”
We’ve had complaint about one juror from the other 11, and now we have a juror going missing, because of a family emergency, and cannot be reached.
No clue as to what the judge might do if the person does not show up tomorrow morning.
This trial is really shaping up to be a clusterf$#@.
So now Greenspan is shocked that a completely unregulated market leads to irrational speculation and abuse.
At the core of the theory capitalism is the idea that selfish people thinking only of themselves are what make the system work.*
If you had ever gotten your head far enough out of Ayn Rand’s long dead festering ass, you would have noticed that there were dozens, if not hundreds, of people you worked with who told you that this was going to happen.
You sir, are not a tool, because a tool has a use.
*Yes, I am paraphrasing Keynes.
Well, it looks like one of my predictions, that Citi CEO Ken Lewis would be shown to be a complete moron to take on the corrupt and insolvent mortgage lender Countrywide Financial is turning out to be true.
Cases in the point: Countrywide, and thus Citi is being sued over accusations it blackballed appraisers who gave accurate assessments of property values, and Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation just forbade them from making new loans in the state for the foreseeable future.
Even after the government bailout, AIG is still lobbying to relax regulations on its business:
When the U.S. took control of failing mortgage titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it prohibited them from lobbying. But it hasn’t banned the practice at AIG, a huge insurer that is still 20%-owned by public shareholders.
AIG is currently working to ease some provisions in a new federal law establishing strict oversight of mortgage originators, according to state regulators. The law requires that originators be licensed by the states, and that they supply comprehensive information so state regulators can track their activities.
To quote Bruce Cockburn, “If I had a rocket launcher, some son-of-bitch would die.”
Let’s be clear about this: the facts as they exist really should be enough to send him down the river for bribery, but it’s easier to show that he took, and did not report gifts.
We have disinterested parties like a contractor testifying that Veco specifically told a contractor to avoid sending a 13 grand bill:
Mr. Paone said Mr. Allen told him to “eat” the final bill and suggested that he “should look at it as a political contribution.”
Mr. Paone said he never alerted Sen. Stevens to the incident because he was concerned it would be “business suicide” to cross Mr. Allen, who was a powerful businessman in Alaska.
We also have his friend who managed the renovations of his chalet that Stevens never asked for a bill or invoice.
Stevens should not be a particularly sympathetic figure, what with his claiming that if anything was done wrong, it was his wife who screwed up, and his decision, because no lawyer in his right mind would put him up there, which showed, as Dana Milbank says:
Ted Stevens once told his Senate colleagues that he’s “a mean, miserable SOB.” Yesterday, he set out to prove it.
(See also here, here, here, and here)
Considering the degree to which the reports all agree that he was contemptuous, evasive, and just plain awful as a witness, I have to conclude that his testifying was Stevens’ and not his Attorney’s idea.
In closing arguments, the prosecutor got to the most damning evidence in the case, the fact that Stevens acknowledged what he was doing could get him into legal trouble.
That pretty much shoots down the argument that it was an “innocent mistake”.
Of course, considering how badly the prosecution has handled this, I get the sense that the judge wants to slap them silly for good cause, there are no guarantees,
In any case, the jury is deliberating now.
Well, the Germans have a bailout plan, one they developed after stiffing the rest of the Euro zone, and now they have been browbeaten into softening pay limitations of their bailout package by bank executives making noises about not accepting state aid.
It was to be a hard pay limit of €500,000 ($666,000), but that was too much for the upper failed management at the failed banks to accept.
Where is my revolver.
It appears taht Lloyds Staff ‘Will Still Get Bonuses’, even after the government injected £5.5 billion into the institution.
While the comment of a Talking Points Memo commenter about Palin and the GOP dropping over $150,000.00 of campaign funds on her cloths and bling is amusing, “If Sarah Palin’s $150,000 wardrobe had a life of its own, it would get a tax cut from a President Obama,” it misses the big picture.
We have to remember that she also accepted per deim payments intended for away from home expenses for times when she was at home, which should have the IRS coming after her, and her bilking the state out of over $21,000.00 for travel expenses for her children.
This is not about Sarah Palin. It is rather about movement conservatism, of which Sarah Palin is, at least until after election day, a sterling example.
Movement conservatism is by its nature corrupt.
Basically, these people read too much Ayn Rand, or more accurately they took it too seriously, because any amount or Ayn being read is too much.
Because of this these people believe that the government, and government service to be inherently evil, and so they enter into service to do what they believe to be evil.
The only reason for them to enter government service is money and power, and they believe that they are owed these little bits of corruption, whether it be Palin’s per deim or Stevens’ house renovations, because they are doing something so awful.
It appears that prosecutors are looking at senior Lehman executivesincluding former CEO Richard Fuld.
Standard concerns, fraud, misleading statements, possible obstruction of justice, etc.
I’m hoping for some jail time.
It appears that someone manipulated the market to drive up John McCain’s numbers.
There’s a surprise. You have a company making book, and the press reporting on the bets being made as a prediction, and someone takes it upon themselves to manipulate the market to get better press coverage.
What took them so long?
It looks like Blackwater Worldwide is offering its services to fight pirates off of Somolia.
I guess, given their unqualified success in Iraq, they think that people will be eager to accept their services.
Because we already know that Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saudr, known as “Bandar Bush” for his close ties to the Bush Crime Family, is unbelievably dirty. He took around £1 billion in commissions to “facilitate” the military sales in question.
Tony Blair shut down the investigations into bribes around the Al-Yamamah arms sales to the house of Saud in response to threats from that nation, and now the OECD has released a blistering critique of the behavior of the British government at that time for Blair’s shutting down that investigation.
Maybe Bush and Blair can share a cell.
So, I read that J.P. Morgan bonuses are to be slashed by 30-50%.
They are getting public money, and they are still getting bonuses?
Bush is determined to push through rule changes to allow dishonest companies to kill and injure ordinary citizens:
Bush administration officials, in their last weeks in office, are pushing to rewrite a wide array of federal rules with changes or additions that could block product-safety lawsuits by consumers and states.
The administration has written language aimed at pre-empting product-liability litigation into 50 rules governing everything from motorcycle brakes to pain medicine. The latest changes cap a multiyear effort that could be one of the administration’s lasting legacies, depending in part on how the underlying principle of pre-emption fares in a case the Supreme Court will hear next month.
Because they know, just like investment banks, nothing untoward will be done by companies, because the holy market place would punish them for maiming children.
Only to go.