Need a Job? $17,000 an Hour. No Success Required.(Fuld gets "Michael Eisner Award")

NY TIMES ^ | 9/17/08 | NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, Op-Ed Columnist

[Liz]

Are you capable of taking a perfectly good 158-year-old company and turning it into dust? You should be raking it in like Richard Fuld, Lehman Bros CEO. He took home nearly half-a-billion dollars in total compensation between 1993-2007. Last year, Fuld earned about $45M, according an executive pay research company. ........ roughly $17,000 an hour to obliterate a firm. If you’re willing to drive a company into the ground for less, apply by calling Lehman Brothers........ Fuld (who continues to lead Lehman since it entered bankruptcy proceedings) is the winner of my annual Michael Eisner Award for corporate rapacity and poor corporate governance. The award honors the pioneering achievements in this field of Mr. Eisner, the former Walt Disney chief.

[Liz]

Watching double-talking Fuld bafflegab the Congress----one concludes his every move as Lehman CEO was to outmaneuver and outsmart regulators to circum-navigate US laws. The name of Fuld's game was to get more and more money for himself and a few hand-picked insiders. Fuld's "victim" act is amazing----clearly thinks he smarter than anyone else----the original Big Dick. Probably walked around the company with a see-through fly. Me-First Fuld deceived investors and anybody else that got in his way. Put him in jail and throw away the key.

As one blogger posted: "CEO's of which Mr. Kristof writes are fiscal terrorists and it would be perfect justice to see them hustled off to Guantanamo and their personal assets confiscated."

[Slapshot68]

CEOs that steal their investors’ money should go to prison. Period.

[Defiant]

I only saw the beginning of the hearing, and it was disgusting. Waxman asking Fuld if he thought his compensation was "fair". There is no fair, there is a willing buyer and a willing seller. If he was paid too much, and he undoubtedly was, the board members who approved his compensation should have been replaced. If he committed crimes, he should go to jail, but you ought to at least tell us what they were, and provide us with your probable cause. I doubt he committed any crimes, except the crime of being wrong, and of following the dicatates of a democrat-protected Fannie and Freddie.

Did he do things that with hindsight he shouldn't have? Yup, as have we all.

The markets are down 800 today not because of Mr. Fuld. His issues are more or less resolved by the bailout. They are down because the system is moving back to the pre-Reagan socialism of FDR through Jimmy Carter, when the dow was what, 1000? Socialists like Waxman are running capitalists like Fuld through the wringer for daring to ask for the maximum they could, and for not being right in all their business decisions, as I'm sure Waxman would have been.

Capitalism is dead, and capital is therefore fleeing. Waxman, not Fuld, is the problem.

[OneWingedShark]

>Are you capable of taking a perfectly good 158-year-old company and turning it into dust?

Yes, I think I am. However, I’d much rather be, you know, competent.

But with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the $700+ billion bailout, competence isn’t exactly being rewarded, is it?

[MARTIAL MONK]

Dunno. Does it have any benefits? Inside work? No heavy lifting?

[The_Reader_David]

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: this isn’t capitalism, this is the rule of the Western version of Milovan Djilas’s ‘new class’—corporate managers, foundation boards, government bureacrats, the same pack of people float in and out of all the roles.

Under capitalism a good CEO’s attitude was summed up by Jay Gould, “The public be damned, I work for my stockholders.”

Under the new system this kind of CEO’s attitude is summed up by “The public and the stockholder be damned, I got mine!”

[Justice4Reds]

Fuld is a stunning example of overrewarding incompetence, but as another poster pointed out, this is how capitalism works. The ‘rats however worked in a punitive anti-executive compensation proviso in their plan that may well end up dooming the buyout and our economic recovery.

[omega4412]

...this isn’t capitalism, this is the rule of the Western version of Milovan Djilas’s ‘new class’—corporate managers, foundation boards, government bureacrats, the same pack of people float in and out of all the roles.

Or Ayn Rand's aristocracy of pull.

[Cyman]

“Waxman asking Fuld if he thought his compensation was “fair”.

Old saying: I am not mad at you , I am mad at the person that hired you.

Also applies to Waxman’s constituents

[Liz]

ping

[Liz]

....... this isn’t capitalism, this is the rule of the Western version of Milovan Djilas’s ‘new class’—corporate managers, foundation boards, government bureacrats, the same pack of people float in and out of all the roles. Under capitalism a good CEO’s attitude was summed up by Jay Gould, “The public be damned, I work for my stockholders.” Under the new system this kind of CEO’s attitude is summed up by “The public and the stockholder be damned, I got mine!” ........

Also describes the political system.

[Liz]

The CEO does a bit of lifting.......to wire-transfer corporate monies to secret offshore accounts.

[Wuli]

This is part of today’s agenda from the Pelosi-Reid-Obama campaign - make “Lehman Brothers” today’s story.

On cue, the Pelosi-Reid show held “hearings” today on the failure of Lehman.

But, Lehman Brothers, it’s officers and it’s shareholders got no bailout from the U.S. taxpayers - they simply filed for bankruptcy and went out of business.

But Freddie and Fannie, both of which actually collapsed and are now only held up under a conservatorship of the U.S. Treasury, with billions already pumped into them and billions more yet needed to make them actually solvent AND THEY WERE U.S. GOVERNMENT STEPCHILDREN, AND THEY WERE REGULATED BY A SPECIAL REGULATOR WHO REPORTED ONLY TO CONGRESS.

But, we digress, in the hands of the media arm of the Pelosi-Reid-Obama campaign (CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS/NPR), the Freddie/Fannie scandal is supposed to be off the air for now and buried completely after the election.

[RipSawyer]

I will do the job for $250,000 annually. I don’t know if I can manage to completely destroy it though, I don’t have an MBA (Master of Berserk Actions).

[Cacique]

btt