Two new chapters were added to the economic catastrophe yesterday, not disconnected.
In the face of continuing news of fiscal excess amongst the banking & finance industries who’ve cried poor to the feds, President Obama laid down the “he who pays the piper calls the tune” law to any financial institution wanting a bailout from the government. To wit:
Henceforth top management of any firm getting taxpayer money will have to scrape by on a maximum of $500K per year. No other compensation except company stock, which they can’t cash out until all “loan” money has been repaid to the government.
Unfortunately, it’s not retroactive, so the top morons at AIG, Citigroup & their ilk are still free to soak up largesse with only the restraints of their boards, which so far have shown themselves to be as parsimonious as conventioneers on unlimited expense accounts.
Still, like the 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, it’s a start.
But the sacrifices don’t stop at the executive floor: Wells Fargo, poor dears, postured for a while about continuing with plans for a 12-day junket for “top employees” at the Wynn & Encore hotels in Vegas. But finally, sullenly, they scuffed their A. Testoni shoes on the Aubusson carpets & scotched the trip.
“In light of the current environment, we have now decided to cancel this event,” Wells Fargo whined in a statement. They also snippily assured us that they never intended to use the government bailout funds for the jolly.
Uh, hello? Like the Gang of Three who insisted that they weren’t going to use taxpayer money to operate their corporate jets, they don’t seem to get the point that if you claim you’re so poor that you need your Uncle Sam to slip you an extra $35B, it doesn’t really matter which pocket you pull the immediate funds from to pay for your toys. It’s really all the same.
Morgan Stanley & Goldman Sachs have also either cancelled “rewards trips” or redirected conferences to their corporate conference rooms.
What I find fascinating is that all of these groups, having watched public outrage at AIG taking a corporate jolly days after stuffing bailout bucks into their coffers & seen John Thain have to reimburse Bank of America for his $1.2M office makeover at Merrill Lynch—but they didn’t think either anyone would notice them carrying on business as usual. Do they have some sort of cloaking device that they think obscures outrageous actions from public detection?
I think a psychiatric consult is in order.
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