CEOs to get their cake and eat it too?

[kestra]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...021104488.html

Am I the only one that thinks this is retarded?

For your entertainment:

Wall Street to Washington:"HELP HELP!! We're in danger of collapsing!! We need a bailout!!"

Washington:"Calm down! Here's a zillion dollars!! You don't need to be specific on how you'll spend it. We know you'll do the right thing!"

Wall Street:"Phew, thanks for having our back, dog!! (suckers!)"

A few weeks go by............

Washington:"Hey Wall Street, you haven't been dishing out billion dollar bonuses to your CEOs have you? I mean, we just gave you a zillion dollars, right?"

Wall Street: "Pardon? I can't hear you over the loud roar of our private jets taking off!!"

(alternative response) GASP!! How dare you imply that we've ripped off the American people!! *Turns away dramatically with face in palms sobbing*

(Wall Street internal dialogue, with strange French accent)
"Sheet, sheet guyz! Zey are onto us!! Vite, vite, doublez ze interest rats on our clientele's credit cards, and add more service chargez, but do not tell zem!!"

Congress to Wall Street:"Since the bailout, have you started lending out money again to home buyers?"

Wall Street:"Maybe we have, and maybe we haven't!! We don't appreciate all this government oversight.
*dangles a golden pocket watch in front of the congressional committee* "you will remove any pay caps on CEOs who have received a bailout!!"

Congress: Okeley dokely!! We apologize for questioning the integrity of Wall Street!!

Congressmen:"say, did you just feel something weird happen? Meh, it's probably just our imagination"

[Gaviani]

Does MoveOn.org pay you per word for your mindless hyperbole, or do you do this pro bono?

Edit: Do you not appreciate a twinge of irony in the quote by Thomas Jefferson in your own signature?

Do you have any idea what that quote actually means?

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Gaviani
Does MoveOn.org pay you per word for your mindless hyperbole, or do you do this pro bono?

     ROFL:ROFL:ROFL:ROFL
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            I    I
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Originally posted by Gaviani

Edit: Do you not appreciate a twinge of irony in the quote by Thomas Jefferson in your own signature?

Do you have any idea what that quote actually means?

Aw man. You spoiled it. I loved the fact that kestra had a quote in his signature that decried the tax-happy philosophy of socialist left.

I am quoting it here, because if he gets someone to help him figures it out he'll remove it.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

-Thomas Jefferson 3rd President of the United States.

[kestra]

Does MoveOn.org pay you per word for your mindless hyperbole, or do you do this pro bono?

Well, you got the hyperbole part right.
If you can remove your ego from the explanation, I'm willing to listen to your history lesson on Jefferson.

[Damieux]

From the article quoted by kestra:

"It was not part of the original agreement," said Laura Thatcher, head of the executive compensation practice at Alston & Bird. "If they're going to retroactively change playing rules, it would seem to me that, in fairness, they would have to give the institutions an opportunity to back out of the deal altogether."

What am I missing here? As far as I know, any institution that wants "to back out of the deal altogether" can do it at any time. Just pay back the money....

[kestra]

Several compensation analysts said yesterday that many of the measures that were in the Senate bill would have faced legal hurdles because they applied retroactively to banks that received government funds under rules agreed to last fall when Congress passed the Troubled Assets Relief Program's capital repurchase plan.

This is part of the problem IMO. Did those who drafted the TARP bill not take the huge bonuses into account? If memory serves, Wall Street tried to ensure that no government oversight would be allowed, or perhaps that was the car companies. Maybe I'm wrong.
All this retroactivity (is that a word?) just seems amateur.

[Noxul]

Originally posted by kestra
Well, you got the hyperbole part right.
If you can remove your ego from the explanation, I'm willing to listen to your history lesson on Jefferson.

Correct me if I'm wrong somebody.

I believe the quote means that Jefferson was opposed to large government which, while purporting to benefit the citizens, would in practice lead to a heavy burden for the people in terms of taxes, inhibited capitalist ventures, corruption, bureacracy, inefficient state-run institutions, etc...

If I've got it right then it's very funny because most of the stances you take on government/economic/societal issues in the forums are always ones that in practice could have the opposite effect to what Jefferson was advocating.

About the topic you posted on, though. I'm not sure, it can't be that the CEOs are getting paid too much or giving themselves too many gifts if people aren't up in arms enough to actually do something about it other than feel armchair outrage.

Of course it was rather tactless but that is what these evil capitalist pig-dogs do, right?

If the USA (or Canada since you are there) was really in dire straights and people couldn't afford to limit themselves to lazy critiquing based on quasi-information seen in the news then the CEOs wouldn't dare to try it.

Be positive, if they are rolling cigars with hundred dollar bills made from your tax money and not getting torn limb from limb by hungry mobs is a sign that the economy is not so bad after all!

I will only start to worry when -all- of the Nike manufacturers in my city shut down instead of only some of them, like now.

So please buy more China-made shoes, they will last just long enough to get you to the car and back* when it is time to go vote on how to handle the economic crisis!

Just kidding

Well. Kind of. I do still want you to buy our shoes. I will slap a logo on them of an old guy with a wig and knock off 5 RMB per container!

*unless it rains

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Noxul
So please buy more China-made shoes, they will last just long enough to get you to the car and back* when it is time to go vote on how to handle the economic crisis!

*unless it rains

You should ship your shoes to Melbourne then. Rain here is so rare that it takes the entire city by surprise.

[Pelic]

In all fairness to Kestra, people take contradictory ideological stances all the time. Yes, the in-your-faceness of the quotation is pretty ironic, but not much more so than other people here who decry "socialism" and "government interference" everytime someone questions laissez-faire capitalism, and simultaneously in other threads call for forced (government) sterilization (or similar punishments/control) of welfare recipients, criminals, etc.

For that matter, Jefferson himself, while adamantly anti-federalist, spent millions of tax-payer money to buy land from France on behalf of the federal government. He was heavily criticized for it, but did it anyway because he thought it best for the country.

Originally posted by kestra
If you can remove your ego from the explanation, I'm willing to listen to your history lesson on Jefferson.

Not that you need my approval, but this is a pretty admirable response.

As to the sentiment expressed in the original comment - the situation makes me think of something Chomsky once said, that, at the time, I disagreed with. Not a direct quote, but he basically said that people tend to see the government as "the enemy", but the real masters in our society are the corporate elite over whom we have zero control.

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by Pelic
Yes, the in-your-faceness of the quotation is pretty ironic, but not much more so than other people here who decry "socialism" and "government interference" everytime someone questions laissez-faire capitalism, and simultaneously in other threads call for forced (government) sterilization (or similar punishments/control) of welfare recipients, criminals, etc.

Uh..... wrong.

A condition for accepting government funds for more than a few years of time is not "forced." They could still choose to not take the funds. That is the government mitigating its damages and trying to break the cycle of dependence.

Nice try though.