Corporate outrages (chapter 27)

A lot of media—traditional & blog—attention is being paid to outrage over corporate excess. You know:

AIG taking billions from you & me (courtesy of our Congress-slime) & then blowing nearly $500K on an “executive retreat”, & now forking out $165M in "performance bonuses" to the very morons who "led" the company into massive failure;

Merrill Lynch pushing through billions in bonuses in the final hours of 2008 so as to relieve new owner Bank of America from the pesky duty of maybe cutting or eliminating them altogether;

That same BofA throwing a five-day $10M Super Bowl bash;

The Gang of Three flying (separate) corporate jets to Washington, D.C., to beg for bailout money in the billions & billions;

Wells Fargo planning a twelve-day “business meeting & recognition event for hard-working team members”—at the Wynn & Encore hotels, for some undisclosed outrageous sum of money.

All of the above (with the exception of Ford) have asked for & accepted billions from us beleaguered taxpayers. They’ve all defended their splash-outs as “not coming from bailout funds”—like you can separate that stuff.

& their lower lips are much extended at them getting spanked for this, because they claim it's necessary for business as usual.

(Clearly, they haven’t got the point that “business as usual” got us all into this mess.)

I particularly love the argument for bonuses & corporate jollies as being necessary to attract & retain the “best talent”; without them the "best talent" would leave in droves. Like that “best talent” isn’t responsible for these companies going into a death-spiral & taking the rest of us with them.

Besides—if this mythical “best talent” does indeed walk—where the hell are they going to go? There are no hedge funds or investment banks left with openings for high-flyers. The masters of those particular universes are clinging to their current paychecks with death grips.

Well, whatever.

What bothers me is that this media fury is probably going to be no more effective than the outrage that permeated the airwaves in the last meltdown: Enron/WorldCom, etc.

In a couple of years everyone will be back to business as usual & the best talent will be back on corporate jets headed to “business meetings.”

Plus ça change…