NOW WE KNOW WHAT A COMMUNITY ORGANIZER DOES
Posted on 09/27/2008 10:45:52 AM PDT by Iron Munro
Here's why many Americans are having a tough time digesting spending $700-billion in tax money to prevent an economic disaster triggered by bad mortgages and greed.
Washington Mutual, the giant lender considered by many to be a poster child for making big profits on wild mortgage lending, was seized by federal regulators Thursday night and immediately sold to J.P. Morgan Chase. It was easily the largest bank failure in American history and only the latest example of the economic instability gripping the country.
The company's chief executive, Alan H. Fishman, had been on the job for less than three weeks. He was on a plane flying from New York to Seattle when the deal was arranged, according to the New York Times.
But don't cry for Fishman. Analysts say he is eligible for $11.6-million in cash severance. And he can keep his $7.5-million signing bonus.
How's that compare to your severance and signing bonus?
It's hard for most Americans to grasp the size and importance of the Bush administration's proposed bailout, even if urgent action is necessary to free up credit and protect the mortgages, businesses and retirement accounts for everyone who has managed their own affairs responsibly. But everyone gets this math: less than three weeks of work at a failing savings and loan for more than $19-million.
That is outrageous — and it explains why so many are so mad.
This latest government scam has created some unusual battlefield alliances out here on the front lines!
Maybe this is the year everyone gets mad enough to vote, and vote non-incumbent. I’m considering it.
Fishman is a big Chuckie Schumer contributor. Natch.
An asteroid visible to the naked eye could be headed for New York City and I would STILL think giving someone about a trillion dollars with no strings attached is a bad idea.
I find it no surprise Washington Mutual was willing to pay some huge money to try to get someone to rescue them as a last-ditch effort 3 weeks ago.
I don't get it. Were people expecting a CEO to take $100,000 for such a a massive responsibility?
Things were spiralling out of control; with the crisis last Thursday, Washington's Mutual's fate was sealed. But the contract had already been signed.
Stories like this are going to eventually lead to a limit to how much money an individual can earn from a company. I think it stinks, but there’s allot of emotion at work here, and it is being played by the dems and liberals to the hilt. Of course stories like the one of WaMu’s CEO doesn’t make it easier to make the case for CEO pay being the free choice of a company.
What’s bad is this is going to be the gateway of the government being able to set the salaries for just about anyone, based on public opinion. A very slippery slope.
It's only the Right that always gets snookered by the media into being “angry” at incumbents, only to wake up and find the liberal commies in charge of government again.
I’m somewhat outraged that bankers gaining from the taxpayer-funded bailout are retaining elite financial benefits. What’s even more outragous is that the multitude of government elected officials in the house and Senate that are a major influence in this lending frenzy are not being brought up on charges. As I keep saying, the same people that ultimately caused this are now trying to solve it with OUR money.
For the record, WaMu was a thrift, not a bank. Thrifts have been poorly regulated and managed even since before the bad old days of the RTC bail-out. I’d can’t prove this, but I’d be willing to bet that thrifts have been proportionately larger contributors to the RATs than have commercial banks.
I'm afraid it may even be worse than that--can stories like this force our children to accept the idea that success is a bad thing, even unAmerican? That they should, instead, push for the lowest common denominator?
Every time I propose my simple market-friendly solution to the problem of obscenely high executive pay, I am accused of being a socialist. Yet my solution is the most capitalist solution of any that I’ve heard of, and in fact, is more capitalist than the current system.
All you’ve got to do is force public companies to put the question of how much the top management should get paid to the shareholders. The only reason they are getting these outrageous pay packages that bear no relationship to what they actually contribute is that they name their own salary since they are in control of the company, and the shareholders are not. Shareholder control of a corporation is the linchpin of the capitalist system. If you separate managerial control from ownership, you are naturally going to have these problems.
And my solution does not involve any more regulation than we already have. The corporate laws already specify what matters must be put to a vote of the shareholders and what can be done by management without shareholder approval. Corporate governance is something that already is regulated, and in fact, corporations themselves would not even exist but for laws that allow them to be created. The only problem with the current laws is that they were written to be management friendly instead of shareholder friendly. But that is easily fixed, if we had politicians who were worth a plug nickel, instead of politicians who always punt on every issue so that the courts can sort it out.
Well there is that little matter of the $33 BILLION that they were given in loan guarantees. Might be nice for them to pay that back before they start giving $1 million dollar a day bonuses to their executives, eh?
Ron Paul should be cheering.
If the bailout takes place, conservatives will desert the repubs.
I guess I missed the part of this story that has something to do with "success."
Eventually this type of thinking will lead all the way to “why should a mechanic earn that much?”, “why does a plumber earn that much?”, and we will have the politics of why the poor and minorities should pay so much when their vehicles break down. You get the idea. It may seem silly to mention now, but rest assured, that’s where it’s going.
Right. I'll become a Democrat. That will show em.
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