Not comparing myself to Emerson in any way, but the sentiment stands. He wrote essays about nature and transcendentalism, and I write . . . hm, what would you call this?
EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE
Best laid plans: I had planned on delving right into the topic of taxation as the final piece that comprises the middle class’ anxiety about their progeny’s economic place in this country. I realized during a conversation with advocates for the poor and the rich that I needed to add a few more paragraphs to the subtopic of the free market, bonuses, global economy, etc.
Advocate of the rich I: . . . stated many of the same predictable things that rich advocates always say when defending the free market and minimizing anyone’s call for regulations that inhibit the irresponsible nature of 21st century financial maneuvers, whether by banks or other financial institutions or stock market mavens. His point- that the market was performing exactly how it should have, in that it was failing and it would have filtered out those who cannot adequately perform their jobs. To him, no government bailout was needed if business is to be conducted as usual in the free market. I would note, and did add to the advocate for the poor, that the traditional conservative’s epitome of a free market overlord is former federal reserve chairman Alan Greenspan who was quoted by everyone, from vindictive liberal columnists to conservative apologists, to an ignorant Spanish Ibex when he was shocked by the events that were taking place in our economy- “Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.” The devotees of the rich, in hindsight, may disparage Greenspan’s reputation all they want. This- let’s call it testimony- does not help your case considering that- “For years, a Congressional hearing with Alan Greenspan was a marquee event. Lawmakers doted on him as an economic sage. Markets jumped up or down depending on what he said. Politicians in both parties wanted the maestro on their side.” The title of the article which contains both quotations- “Greenspan Concedes Error on Regulation” written by Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times, October 23, 2008. (See- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html) Whether Greenspan sold out to the government and agreed to say such things as a way of convincing the public to support a bailout remains to be seen. (Note: His words may actually have caused me to think that bailing them out was a necessary evil, but that regulations and accountability should be built into subsequent financial industry agreements/contracts in the future- or the bailout need not happen- see part- ?? How the hell should I know. I've written so many pages on this topic so far that Austrailia's blue-tongued skink is tired of it.)
Advocate of the rich II: See footnote * below, but also keep in mind that Obama is not the only one blaming the talented financial industry workers for playing a major role in causing our economic mess (he mentioned this as a primary cause for our economic mess on both 60 Minutes and during his March 24, 2009 press conference)- that would be a kind of urban legend that someone believes and then disseminates to coworkers at a happy hour. Obama was probably briefed and then delivered that assessment after industry insiders had made it common knowledge. Consider this, from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (from March 17, 2009) “I live in Montgomery County, Md. The schoolteachers here, who make on average $67,000 a year, recently voted to voluntarily give up their 5 percent pay raise that was contractually agreed to for next year, saving our school system $89 million — so programs and teachers would not have to be terminated. If public schoolteachers can take one for schoolchildren and fellow teachers, A.I.G. brokers can take one for the country.
“Let’s not forget, A.I.G. was basically running an unregulated hedge fund inside a AAA-rated insurance company. And — like Madoff, who was selling phantom stocks — A.I.G. was selling, in effect, phantom insurance against the default of bundled subprime mortgages and other debt — insurance that A.I.G. had nowhere near enough capital to back up when bonds went bust. It was a hedge fund with no hedges. That’s why taxpayers have had to pay the insurance for A.I.G. — so its bank and government customers won’t tank and cause even more harm.” (See- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/opinion/18friedman.html?_r=1.) If this was not a leading component of our economic problems, a symptom, a cause, whatever, but our moral sense of right and wrong should become more healthy by consistently reminding us of the difference between right and wrong and compelling us to demand restitution for those obviously guilty of having done the latter, particularly when it harms an entire country of people and a number of people around the world that I was not aware America had become contractually obligated to assist.
Never trust a fart: A student was suspended for farting on a bus in Florida last week and in the article that relates that news is included a sentence about a 13-year-old student that “was arrested in November after authorities said he broke wind in class.” Really, kids are getting punished for farting, a sometimes involuntary (non pig odor type) of air quality infringement and we can’t punish those who deliberately did so much wrong that it registers in the mind of the mouse-like jerboa of the Gobi Desert that has been preoccupied with a fight against its insurance company trying to get them to consent to pay for the somewhat elective stilt-leg reduction surgery. (For the gas passing story- see “Student Suspended for Passing Gas on Bus” Associated Press, March 23, 2009.)
Advocate of the poor I: The advocate for the poor is an extremely intelligent contractor whose point was that in a global economy if the United States is to have so much capital it is going to have to float more boats, that the poor want a piece of the puzzle and will displace American workers in order to do it. Hard to argue with the desires of the poor, but it is easy to tell someone, even if their altruism quotient is as high as my co-worker’s, to ask for some reciprocity from the rich, to ask those getting the AIG-style bonuses to sacrifice rather than someone who is about to receive a 1.5% salary increase, or to forget that the poor’s raised standard of living is something our American grandchildren will have to pay for. It should be stated that my co-worker had the poor of the greater world in mind when he mentioned those thirsting for a better life and not the poor of this country. Until we can get our own house in order we will not be able to assist all comers, even should they do us the favor of taking our jobs. If the wasteful spending does not put more money back into the hands of everyone, including the rich, then the rich, some of whom are so rich they have mud rooms in their RVs, should be taxed more. I’ve written this many times, as far back as part 5. The poor of all nations expecting America to save them from this global economic hell, would do well to remember how tiresome it is be told that because of an allowed global competition for jobs (in America), the world’s eager poor are capable of stealing millions more middle class jobs than they already have. And I say stealing, because the greedy corporate executives, are complicit in their handing over our country to workers of other nations- “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” – Abraham Lincoln. Which way are we choosing? We couldn’t be any more conscious of our decision than if we were leaning over a pool of water to refresh ourselves knowing that it was filled with mature crocodiles.
Advocate of the poor II: It goes without saying that the executives should be stripped of their healthy bonuses, no matter how talented they think they are. I told the advocate of the poor to start there. He and I discussed the nature of risk v. reward financial markets. My point would be that for too long, sans regulations, those in the business of controlling everyone’s retirement accounts have gotten ten times the benefit from investor collateral; financial industry employees have enjoyed plenty of reward with little risk, relatively speaking. One thing I would add to the advocate of the poor, and to the rich for that matter, as the poor (however, not even those that reside in this country) have been benefiting by the decisions made by the rich, who are moving middle class jobs overseas- the migration of jobs overseas has got to stop, and the poor’s climb** into the middle class cannot be made at the expense of those who are already there and have worked hard enough to stay.*** It seems a paper in “Pasadena, Calif. Dismissed its writers and outsourced its reporting to Pakistan (amusing, yes; joke, no), it saved overhead and became irrelevant.” (See John Olson’s article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Opinion Exchange section- OP1 and OP4, March 15, 2008.) When I get rich, I plan on outsourcing back-stabbed knife extraction to the Martians; they’ll be cheaper than Guatemalans and Pakistanis because I can probably pay them in bottled oxygen, to be had at a reduced rate if purchased in bulk, if the mixture is laced with pig odor stench.
AIG
AIG: I’ve read plenty and enough about the AIG $165 million bonus scandal. I’ve read columns about how Washington must act on the bonuses and be a wrongdoing arbitrator, why they can’t do anything about the bonuses, and heard that AIG is going to have to change its name in order to allow it to successfully do business in the future. I wonder why snakes haven’t thought of this. I’ve heard that trying to pass legislation that requires the bonuses be returned is unconstitutional. Make it Constitutional! Perhaps the most ridiculous reason given for the greedy to keep their bonuses is that it is contractual. One Ruth Marcus, writing for the Washington Post, whose article appeared in the March 20, 2009 Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Opinion Exchange section has chosen this logic. Oh, she makes the same arguments about not jeopardizing the incomes of those who would help us fix the mess we’re in, but goes a couple of steps further. In the article, I saw for the first time- how columnists and writers could make the word “populist” into a word with negative connotations. Yeah, lord forbid that the public demand accountability from those with financial control security clearance. Marcus writes that we are a country of laws and cannot legislate retroactively, that “federal legislation explicitly states that compensation limits for companies receiving bailout funds do not apply to preexisting contracts.” Why would that be? Have we bailed out the financial sector so often that a standard contract has been decided upon, with our input, who are one-half of the consenting parties? I love it- who invented sarcasm anyway?
AIG and athletics: Contracts are torn up, violated, and infringed upon all of the time. The main thing is to get such weighty concerns, such as $750 billion in bailouts, right. I am so confident of my thinking here that I am not even going to spend the 2-3 hours of research looking for supporting arguments. One occurred to me just naturally. While this scandal did not help produce a recession and does not involve federal legislation . . . George O’Leary accepted the position of head football coach at Notre Dame. “A few days after being hired” –there is no doubt that the hiring of a head football coach at Notre Dame involved a contract between the university and the coach, he was fired for things that rather remind me of the types of lies and antics that our AIG pariahs have become famous for. O’Leary claimed he “had earned a master’s degree” from a non-existent university and claimed he earned varsity letters for football from a school for which he had never played a game. O’Leary’s net impact on the wider world- 0, AIG’s- considerably more. Ultimately, if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain for reasons that are the epitome of delinquency and greed then the spirit of , and the law behind, contractual obligations is going to have to change. Sports contracts have plenty of clauses that address a player’s limitations away from the playing field. If he is injured riding a motorcycle, surfing, tests positive for a performance enhancing drug, or manages a fjord pony and dugong at an all nude burlesque show, the terms of their contract have been violated and the team that is paying him for participating, can withhold payment- legally. Those terms are written into the contract. And with that, I imagine that O’Leary’s contract included a clause whereby if he was found to have lied on his resume, he could be fired. Those who would mock an apparent lack of pertinent examples will always seem to miss one very valuable piece of oversight common to all sports and missing from Washington (politics) and New York (the Mecca of finance) . . . populism. Heh, just kidding- see what I did there- just one small step in the making of a word into a derogatory term. No, the word I am thinking of is- officiating.
Contractual: I am tired of the least common denominator citizens of this country hiding behind what is or is not written into contracts. Home improvement contractors hide behind an obligation to pay on the part of the homeowner for inferior craftsmanship; Michael Vick still got $20 million from his previous employer, the Atlanta Falcons, though he was operating a dog-fighting ring out of his home, is sitting in federal prison and hasn’t played a game in two years; Stephon Marbury, of the New York Knicks, refused to play in a game and sulked on the Knicks’ bench for the majority of the 2008-09 season and still raked in the vast majority of his $21 million salary after being fined at least twice, once for refusing to play in a game. Don’t offer that a contract’s major included stipulations must be adhered to as it is always what is not included that most derails this society's sense of decency and the insubordinate’s rationale for not conducting business in a professional manner. With a lack of oversight that egregious, what is unaccountably missing can be a bigger problem than what is included. Someone defending those for whom Dante must have reserved their own circle of hell (ok, well, then one they will be sharing with the bed-wetting capybara) ought to know better.
It’s Jurassic: A Jeff Goldblum line from Jurassic Park is the most morally pertinent way of ending this exacting portion of the overall topic. When the scientists visiting the dinosaur park had the chance to sit down to discuss the reality of what they had just seen with the man who had funded that level of creation and future carnage and whether moneybags should have done such a thing as genetically reintroduce dinosaurs into the world, Goldblum’s chaoticianous character (one that proclaims the plausibility of chaos theory) had this to say to the financier- “You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn't stop to think if you should.” Phrased another way by us- 'made to feel guilty about taking back bonuses that never should have been paid out' bastards, I might change the phrasing and deliver the message to those who think it is unconstitutional and in poor manners to circumvent an apparent business dealings commandment about contractual agreements- “You have been so preoccupied with whether or not you shouldn’t you haven’t stopped to think if you should.” I am no chrisitian, but there is a place for morality which will always supersede the terms, or lack of them, in a contract signed by the devil.
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* See- “AIG Firestorm Raises Alarm for Other Firms” by David Cho and Binyamin Appelbaum, Washington Post, March 18, 2009. In the article this paragraph appears: “The attack by lawmakers on AIG pay has provoked renewed complaints from some financial company executives that federal involvement in business decisions is making it difficult for struggling firms to return to profitability. In particular, executives say they need to offer bonuses to keep and motivate their most valuable employees and are already seeing an exodus of talent.” Two things- 1) where will they go if they are not feeding like leeches off of the toil, measured in dollars, of others; 2) is the same talent, those who apparently will be going on hiatus from bilking the consumer . . . are those the investors and financial magnates who got us into this mess in the first place? I’m confused . . . how is talent defined in the financial world? If the answer to that first question is yes . . . oh the options for a response are endless- here is one: I would rather brush the teeth of an annoyed hippopotamus with my eyelashes than reward executives or the financially “talented” with a bonus or a job. Would the “talented” financial employees be the ones insuring worthless derivatives and sacrificing real, measurable long-term growth? If I screw up at work I am reminded by some complete bitch of a software developer; if a talented financial industry employee screws up he is paid a retention bonus. To paraphrase president Obama, from a March 22, 2009 60 Minutes interview, those “talented” employees may need to take a step out of New York every once in awhile in order to get a dose of reality for their undiagnosed case of ego-centrism. I added the medical verbiage. Also within that article is further proof of a sickness only morally bankrupted, co-dependent accounting division employees would understand- wanting to pay “retention bonuses to keep employees who are unwinding its Financial Products division” over at AIG. Also, “A senior executive at one of the nation’s largest banks said he had heard from several hedge funds that they would not partner with the government for fear that lawmakers would impose retroactive conditions on their participation, such as limits on compensation or disclosure requirements.” And I had heard from a hedgehog, the runt of its litter, with a severe brain malfunction, that has not yet been tied to the inhalation of pig odor (see part 45) that is bright enough to require retroactive conditions such as compensation caps and disclosure requirements be put in place. A hedgehog is appropriately named considering that the investment managers can, should they be allowed to by a lack of government interference, trade commodities and debt, etc. and can creatively account for a very wide range of activities- in essence hog the capital produced by the hedge fund.
Coincidentally, a hedgehog’s SOP would be to perform a set of maneuvers that are virtually indistinguishable from the talented financial markets investor, or CEO of a major corporation, who has received word that their president, and others, have requested they return a bonus they never earned, and which the taxpayer who has gathered a 1.5% raise has helped fund, from bailout money that never should have been paid to them- “Hedgehogs occasionally perform a ritual called anointing. When the animal comes across a new scent, [such as a potential regulating agency, government entity or a fed up public] it will lick and bite the source and then form a scented froth in its mouth and paste it on its spines with its tongue. It is not known what the specific purpose of this ritual is, [it has been speculated that they do not like the aforementioned emasculation] but some experts believe anointing camouflages the hedgehog with the new scent of the area and provides a possible poison or source of infection to any predator that gets poked by their spines.” (Source- Wikipedia- with some embellishment.) The "new scent" component of this activity is not unlike what a former industry giant, such as AIG, might do to hide the trail of tears it has caused- something like planning on changing its name, which new AIG head Edward Liddy has the intention to do, as he mentioned in front of the collected enablers at the House Financial Services hearing last week.
** An ascendancy, that to be clear, is enjoyed by the poor of other nations and not this one.
*** Which of course, as I have stated several times since I started this topic, only takes into consideration those in the middle class that do not overcharge their credit card, buying or financing homes, cars, boats, televisions, video gaming equipment, clothing and other belongings they cannot afford.
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