ARROGANT TITANS FLUNK THE LEADERSHIP TEST (chapped lips from kissing their mirrors)

NY POST ^ | 10/11/08 | Bloomberg News

[Liz]

Executives passing the buck for failures win no sympathy. "They need to man up and take responsibility," said Warren Bennis, U of So California. "They kept believing in their own omniscience thinking they can get away with anything." CEO's summoned to Capitol Hill offered a variety of excuses for their failures. Lehman Brothers' Richard Fuld said that management did "everything we could to protect the firm." Fuld's 8-year compensation totaled $484.8M. Harvey Mackay, author of "Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: "They all have chapped lips from kissing the mirror too much."

[Liz]

Fuld and AIG CEO Martin Sullivan are the face of corporate greed. Now the Federal Reserve yesterday boosted its total tab for AIG's rescue to $122.5 billion, adding $37.8 billion to its original $85 billion lifeline three weeks ago. With taxpayers money in their pockets---AIG honchos luxuriated with a $440,000 junket at this posh spa at California's St. Regis resort.

Ever wonder how many sex acts US taxpayers paid for? Lookit that overstuffed AIG CEO Sullivan---guy's gotta be paying for it---no decent woman would volunatarily perform sex acts on this overfed pig.

The market will continue to crash until Bush goes to the Rose garden and announces he's unleasing rhe FBI, DOJ, state AG's and the entire justice apparat to nail AIG spa-goers, Raines and the Fannie Mae thieves, hedgers, Fuld.... all these guys that put personal greed over the well-being of stockholders and the US economy. Bush must announce people will go to jail for their massive crimes.......crimes they deliberately committed to satiate their unbridled greed.

[ReignOfError]

The “junket” was hosted by a division of the company that was and still is profitable. It was a reward for the independent insurance agencies that sell AIG’s policies, none of whom had a thing to do with mortgage derivatives. It was booked in advance and mostly non-refundable.

So what should AIG have done? Cancel the trip and show the back of its hand to the people who are actually making them money, so they could save a fraction of the cost of the event and improve their balance sheet by .00001%?

[REPANDPROUDOFIT]

The market will continue to crash until Bush goes to the Rose garden and announces he's unleasing rhe FBI, DOJ, state AG's.......

Amen! What does Bush have to lose? Two months ago, I could have seen him just waiting it out in the WH, believing that history would exonerate him. Not gonna' happen now! Right now, we need a strong president who is actually leading us. Not two wanna-be politicians who pretend to have all the answers.

While I'm at it. Ain't it funny how, while most of the country was having a love fest with their boutique lifestyles and immense 401k's, they were, simultaneously bashing Bush for the "struggling" economy. He got no credit for bringing us through some of the toughest economic times in our history (Sept. 11, Enron, internet bubble) or for getting us to the highest standard of living the country has ever enjoyed. (I know, it was a house-of-cards economy, but I am focused on where the credit was going) Libs blamed him when things were good great, and now they blame him when everything is tanking.

[REPANDPROUDOFIT]

So what should AIG have done? Cancel the trip ....

In a word, YES! It is called "appearances".

[REPANDPROUDOFIT]

So what should AIG have done? Cancel the trip ....

In a word, YES! It is called "appearances".

[raybbr]

Lookit that overstuffed AIG CEO Sullivan---guy's gotta be paying for it---no decent woman would volunatarily perform sex acts on this overfed pig.

Corpulence is a common disease among the affluent CEO class.

[Reeses]

It’s a conservative cause to be furious about taxpayer money being abused. But unbridled envy is not conservative. The current economic mess was caused by affirmative action lending and other government policy changes. We shouldn’t behave like leftists looking for rich white capitalists to demonize and pin the blame on.

[EQAndyBuzz]

“The current economic mess was caused by affirmative action lending and other government policy changes.”

IMHO this mess was caused by very wealthy people trying to become even more wealthy at the expense of the middle class. The “elites” exploit the lower class for their own purposes, using people like Jackson and Sharpton to keep their peeps in line. In exchange they get humored and get to sit at the grownup table.

In my opinion this is what happened. The wealthy elites used Fannie and Freddy as their personal piggy bank. They did the same with oil, pumping up the price to ridiculous levels then selling off, making huge profits. The ones who lost money, got bailed out. The ones who made money are now sitting back waiting for the markets collapse, so that they as well as the bailout recipients can use our taxpayer dollars to buy back everything at bargain basement prices.

In the interim, the busted out their political rivals. This was a Democrat powerplay that filled their coffers, while at the same time blaming this on the Republicans.

Bambi is a tool for the elites. The Democrats played it out over the last 8 years where they marginalized the Presidency. Bambi will turn into a figurehead as the legislative and judicial branches of goverment take over.

Europe here we come. And there isn’t going to be a damn thing we can do about it because “if you control the information the people get, you control the people.”

And the MSM has that pretty well wrapped up. The minute the internet can be legislated, the fairnes doctrine implemented and the second amendment repealed, we will be a Marxist society.

[Nailbiter]

2nd amendment was designed for issues such you describe

[Diogenesis]

Dodd: "Wow, Barney, with you in bed with everyone, we have it made.
Endless kickbacks. Women and money for free. No accountability.
Oh, how it must truly suck to be our helpless constituents.
"

[Reeses]

In my opinion this is what happened. The wealthy elites used Fannie and Freddy as their personal piggy bank. They did the same with oil, pumping up the price to ridiculous levels then selling off, making huge profits.

Conspiracy theories are easy to think up, just don't go off the deep end and believe in them without actual evidence. The big problem with conspiracies is the only way that two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead. Increase the conspiracy to dozens or hundreds of living players and keeping the lid on the plan is humanly impossible. If your creative theory is true then there must be hard evidence somewhere to back it up.

Oil prices went up because of supply and demand changes, mainly increasing demand. Oil consumption increases 3% per year and even faster now with China and India developing. But supply is not keeping up since the easy stuff has already been pumped. Now with a depression forming world wide demand has fallen hard which results in falling prices.

There are very few truly greedy people in the world and most end up in jail under their own power. However there are billions of truly envious people that project their envy onto others as false greed. Marxists try to whip up the masses into an envious rage because they can advance their goal of destroying the objects of their envy.

The smart rich people in America tend not to be sinister and evil. It's too easy for them to make money honestly. Most evil comes from the envious, and true greed is really an extreme form of envy.

I agree Marxism is growing in America. But it's not coming from the smart rich people but from those who envy America and wish to destroy it. Their false happiness over the Wall Street meltdown is apparent, and they feel safe now in displaying their normally masked envy. They should be called on their envy and held up for contempt. Cooking up conspiracy theories to blame the rich is not the way to handle this attack on America.

[Liz]

Must be all those lunches and dinners at 5-star restaurants——which use copius amounts of butter and cream in those delectable dishes.

[Liz]

"Nice bwailot, guys---we soon will be lolling on our vewy own
twopical beachfwont villas near all of our offshore bank accounts."

[raybbr]

This is not just a democrat problem. Look at the years that purchasing from Fannie and Freddie ballooned. It was under a republican Congress and White House. Bush has been pushing "homeownership" for minorities his entire presidency.

When HUD released the next set of goals in 2004, it reported that after Cuomo's previous edict, there had been a sudden spurt of GSE subprime investment, "partly in response to higher affordable-housing goals set by HUD in 2000." Fannie had gone from $1.2 billion in subprime-mortgage and securities purchases in 2000 to $9.2 billion in 2001 and $15 billion in 2002. Freddie's numbers were murkier, but clearly also on the rise. In 2003 alone, the two bought $81 billion in subprime securities—which also count against the goals.

Fannie also developed a "flexible" product line, providing up to 100 percent financing and requiring borrowers to make as little as a $500 contribution, and bought $13.7 billion of those loans in 2003. In addition to subprime loans and securities, both banks burst into the "alt-a" market, making alternative products easily available to borrowers who had slightly better credit histories than subprime borrowers, but were unwilling to provide full documentation of their financial histories. (It was the "alt-a" investments that recently brought down the private bank IndyMac.) These risky adventures, according to the 2004 HUD report, prompted Freddie to claim that "the increased goals created tension in its business practices between meeting the goals and conducting responsible lending practices," a self-serving attempt to plant the blame back on HUD.

After this initial uptick, the two banks purchased $434 billion in securities backed by subprime loans between 2004 and 2006. The Washington Post noted this June that the GSEs' aggressive acquisitions "created a market for more such lending" by others, feeding the fire. No one knows just how big a bite the subprime mess is now taking out of the GSEs, or how much of that portfolio will ultimately go bad, but it has become axiomatic that, whatever the total, it is too much, since it will have seriously shaken confidence in these two linchpin institutions.
From here.

[raybbr]

Must be all those lunches and dinners at 5-star restaurants——which use copius amounts of butter and cream in those delectable dishes.

Actually I think it because they are like the "Wraith" in Stargate - they actually feed off of other beings sucking the very life out of them.

[Liz]

Cooking up conspiracy theories to blame the rich is not the way to handle this attack on America.

Oh please---get down off your soapbox. There's plenty of blame to go around.

To exculpate the CEO's who had their greedy hands in the moneypot is just plain dumb.

EQANDY BUZZ NAILS IT: "The wealthy elites used Fannie and Freddy as their personal piggy bank. They did the same with oil, (speculators) pumping up the price to ridiculous levels then selling off, making huge profits. The ones who lost money, got bailed out. The ones who made money are now sitting back waiting for the markets collapse, so that they as well as the bailout recipients can use our taxpayer dollars to buy back everything at bargain basement prices. In the interim, the busted out their political rivals. This was a Democrat powerplay that filled their coffers, while at the same time blaming this on the Republicans."

[mewzilla]

Meanwhile, from a couple of weeks ago....

Senator Hides His Sweet Deals When Will He Release Records?

Anyone know if Dodd's coughed up yet?

[Liz]

So what should AIG have done? Cancel the trip ....

Of course thet would have cancelled the trip....if (BIG IF) they had a shred of humanity in them. Clearly, these self-absorbed individuals have no concern for anyone or anything execept their immediate gratification.

This selfishness, Me-First obsession, and self-aggrandizement is wreaking havoc in our culture. These people worship at the Church of Whatever Works For ME.

[Liz]

"What quid pro quo? I tell ya---it was a lousy mortgage from my pal, Angie."

[Teacher317]

Neither the CEO's nor their firms failed. They were put into an untenable position... some would say intentionally. The Left pressured lenders into giving loans to unqualified applicants, often based on race. Anyone who might have the good sense to refuse to make such a loan would be threatened with a lawsuit for discrimination, facing vast losses via PR even if the suit is unsuccessful. Thus, few refused. Heck, why not feel good about helping the poor, right? Give the loan, potentially improve the bottom line, feel like you're a part of "social justice", and the Feds will even let you cook the books a little if necessary to cover things up. Well, it has come back to bite us in the ass... and it isn't the CEO's who are primarily responsible.

The MSM and our representatives are more than happy to see the anti-capitalist cry and hue from the crowd, but we all must remember who is REALLY responsible for this criminally short-sighted insanity and this huge financial fiasco.