Nice Work If You Can Get It, Pt. Two
Ill: Wizard of Whimsy
More from the Frontlines of the War to Protect Rich Peoples' Preogatives:
Heretic liberals take untoward advantage of economic woes to taunt proven money makers (well, for themselves. at least). You should be outraged!
Robert Borsage, writing in support of the liberal agenda, dares to criticize the captains of cannibal capitalism whose hard work made this latest recession bearable for CEO's, & unfairly taunts former Citibank CEO Charles Prince. (Who really didn't get paid enough to take this crap!):
As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.
"These now-immortal words of former Citibank President Charles 'Chuck' Prince were uttered in July, as Citibank was about to lose billions in everything from mortgages to credit cards. Prince departed with a reported $68 million good-bye package. Stanley O’Neal, who led Merrill Lynch to write off a record $9.9 billion in last quarter, departed with a $161 million severance package.
"Now the top five Wall Street banks – three of whom racked up record losses – have announced that they are paying their employees a record $39 billion in year-end bonuses. Hemorrhaging losses, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Bear Sterns had to increase the percentage of revenue they devote to pay to ladle out these bonuses. So much for pay for performance.
"Bank spokesman were not exactly lining up to justify this, but Jeanne Branthover, managing director of a global search firm, helpfully explained: 'It’s essential that pay is still there or you’re going to lose really good people.'
"Well. Is she talking about the really good people whose feckless speculation is now pushing the global economy into recession and will cost hundreds of thousands of Americans their homes? The really good people whose 'dancing' got so risqué that the somnambulant Federal Reserve just issued new regulations requiring bankers to assess whether the borrowers they are lending money to actually have a blue moon chance at repaying the loan? The wizards who, as Allan Sloan points out in The Washington Post, spent the last couple years buying back their stock at the top of the market, only to be forced to sell it off to foreign investors at the bottom in the desperate effort to keep from going belly-up?
Mean, mean Robert Borsage, attacking defenseless free-market capitalists when they're down!
But, in other news today, President Bush's Ronald Reagan Republicans, with neo-con lite Democrat friends like Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid, struck a blow today in the much-vaunted "bipartisan effort" to inject some stimulus into the economy that the captains of commerce, despite their best efforts to buy bigger McMansions, more Beamers, stretch Hummers, small jets & expensive jewelry for their soon-to-be 2nd or 3rd wives, could not, by themselves, fulfull through no fault of their own.
Tax refunds for the working poor, extended unemployment benefits, & more foodstamps are OFF the table in the House of Representative's proposal.
Hooray! After all, who would the captains of industry (or money-churning, as it were) get to work for them as maids, office boys, clerks, secretaries & miscellaneous beancounters at slave wages if we gave the self-evidently UNDESERVING a break? Bush capped it by heroically vetoing for a 2nd time the Children's Health Insurance Plan expansion which would have spread the scourge of socialized medicine to their even more undeserving children.
If you insist in reading about the tawdry mess yourself:
Undeserving Children: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22805359/
Labels: America at Fire-Sale Prices, It's the Economy, Stupid
posted by Demon Princess at 6:39 PM
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