Posted on 01/30/2009 11:55:19 AM PST by Red in Blue PA
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One day after President Barack Obama ripped Wall Street executives for their "shameful" decision to hand out $18 billion in bonuses in 2008, Congress may finally have had enough.
An angry U.S. senator introduced legislation Friday to cap compensation for employees of any company that accepts federal bailout money. Under the terms of a bill introduced by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, no employee would be allowed to make more than the president of the United States.
Obama's current annual salary is $400,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
They always annualize the rate of change.
These companies scared the hell out of the USG by threatening to go under. They could have and should have been forced to do so. Problem solved. Can't get blood out of a carrot then. Compensation contracts have clauses in them for that very scenario. But, if the money is available, and the USG made sure it was, then the companies have to pay it.
I surmise that you are speaking of the UAW. I do believe that the auto bailout was a separate scheme from the financial bailout. They were actually forced to present a business plan to congress before they got theirs. AIG and the rest were not required to do so. They just rolled over and got their bellies scratched by you & me, courtesy of the USG.
In other words, the USG attached strings to the auto bailout and I suppose reserved the right to refuse to give the bailout should their business plans suck. That includes the right decide to allow/disallow labor packages.
Nobody had the brains (is that a surprise??) at the time to attach strings to the rest of them. Too rushed to do “SOMETHING NOW!” Marry in haste, repent in leisure.
To bitch and complain now, especially after they've already opened our wallets or bent over (whichever you prefer), is just stupid, and is serving zer0’s purpose well. EEEEVILLL business!! We is the govbermet, and we is here to help. We is gonna save allyall. Gonna git one up on tha man! Shore nuff!! Gonna bitchslap them fancyass whiteboycrackers righonoutta hearh.
That's good, solid growth ~ 23%!
If you want to know why the GOP will lose in 2010, read this thread...they are completely out of touch...we should pick up some seats, but we won’t. Who’s going to vote for a Party that advocates Banking CEO’s get billions in bonuses while running the companies into the ground...while Americans are literally losing their entire life savings as well as their jobs.
This economy is in terrible shape, and you probably know it. If we are not in a depression we are damned close.
Wall Street bankers style of business is evil...and far more dangerous than any union.
I've been in business for 18 years. My first priority is my employees. They've been with me for years, and I want to keep every single one of them. I've paid them good wages over these years, or else they wouldn't still be with me. I don't need or want the government to tell me that I can't pay a master electrician more than an apprentice helper.
A master electrician is more valuable to me through his education and experience than an apprentice helper right out of vo-tech school. Both are important, but one has more value than the other. This is the free market at work, and that apprentice will eventually be as valuable when he becomes a master. Just like a CEO is more valuable than the mail clerk.
Now, with this next round of 350B getting ready to be disbursed, the government SHOULD attach strings to it. If the company doesn't want the strings, they shouldn't take the bailout. It's up front, and the companies will have to comply. No more CEO gazillion dollar bonuses for companies that do to take it.
That is reasonable, and I don't have a problem with it, if it only goes that far. (yeah right, when has the USG ever overreached) My fear is that any company that does business with those companies will have unfair labor practices forced on them as well.
Those companies that take the next bailout WILL lose talented people though. Make no mistake about it. The people who can afford to will just bow out. There is no incentive other than being “patriotic” to put up with fixed wages. This hurts everybody.
I'm down approx. 20k with my investments. Not exactly chump change, but not everything I had either. I sold out last March when the SHTF the first time. I understand what you are saying, but this is the nature of the beast. To get ahead in this world you have to take a risk, and the bigger the risk is usually the largest return or greatest failure. Where does that leave everybody in the middle? Hoping for failure or hoping for success?
I guess those tax payer built stadiums don't count...
The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007, making official what most Americans have already believed about the state of the economy.
The Recession Is Made Official — and Stocks Take a Dive
I think you should take your rose colored glasses off. The TARP and stimulus packages will prolong the recession and plunge us further down the road to financial ruin. Wait until hyperinflation kicks in.
LOL. That's real scientific. Women comprise more than half of those attending college today. On average, they are better educated than males. They want careers, jobs, and independence. Certainly my daughter and nieces do, all of whom work.
Kids suffer because parents come home too tired in many cases to deal with the kids in terms of school and emotional support...I didn’t argue about better education of woman...I merely pointed out that more women are in the workforce today than in past decades. The table I provided clearly demonstrates this is the case...you position was that just as many woman worked in the past as they do today...this is not accurate.
Stop creating phony strawmen. This is what I said, " After WWII, the number of households where more than one parent worked was more the rule than the exception." WWII was a watershed event in terms of women working and the jobs they took. They filled in for the men while they were in the military. As your chart shows, this has increased dramatically since 1950. The chart doesn't indicate the rates for married and single women.
The days of Ozzie and Harriet were better days...they are only over becomes we have pursued economic suicide with stupid trade laws and globalization.
Sorry, but we are not ever going back to that "reality." Women only got the vote [federal] in 1920. Blaming the emancipation of women on trade laws and globalization is nonsense. It was an evolutionary movement that continues to this day.
Women want the same opportunities and choices as men. This is no longer a male dominated society--whether you like it or not. Women are flying attack jets off of aircraft carriers. They are astronauts, lawyers, doctors, etc. I lived five years in Saudi Arabia. You would feel right at home in the way they treat women. I guess your ideal is a Stepford wife.
The stupid Wall Street idiots not only destroyed their companies, they will destroy capitalism with the help of their good buddies the free trade fools.
You do live in the past and your reference to "Wall Street idiots" is reminiscent of Soviet propaganda that blamed Wall Street and capitalism for the ills of the world. Stop blaming the productive members of this society and recognize where the problem really lies, i.e., government. One in six workers in this country now works for the government, which produces nothing. I say that advisedly having worked for the USG for 36 years. You are buying the Dem and socialist progaganda hook, line, and sinker.
Where was Sen. McCaskill last October when it was revealed that Goldman Sachs was paying huge bonuses, yet that company led all others in contributions to Obama's campaign? And where was her outrage when these same Wall Street firms lined up to fork over money for Obama's inauguration? She has known this for months, yet was silent when Obama was getting the money. Go figure.
Once the Obama Depression was underway, aggregate results for 2008 changed, but all things that happened in 2008 didn't all happen in the last quarter.
You have been deceived by propaganda.
The way to fight propaganda is the truth, and we have Obamasama "truthers" on this thread trying to tell us that an "annualized rate" is something that it is not.
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it...I think when something obviously does not work as in the consumption economy, you find something that does...Historically, manufacturing based has worked with some trade barriers...yes trade barriers. Every country in the world has trade barriers to protect their industry... only the chumps in the US are willing to allow trade to destroy their country and in the end capitalism...if something is not done...then prepare for European style socialism.
The companies did not suddenly fail in September. They were in big trouble; forget the conspiracy theories, we had a GOP president and a GOP appointed Fed- ie Pualson and Bernake. Obama did not crash Wall Street...Wall Street crashed Wall Street.
Now you are using red herring arguments...it has nothing to do with the issue at hand...which is should the Wall Street bailed out companies get bonuses using tax money?... I don’t care who supported what. I don’t care if those fools on Wall Street sent money to Obama (this proves their stupidity), I don’t want bonuses given in companies who received bailouts period.
I pray to make it to inflation...because this would mean we avoided a 1930’s style depression.
There is plenty of talent out there. Frankly, these companies are insolvent. It does not take talent to drive a company down...let them go. The government should only tell bailed out companies what to do. They are essentially bankrupt and the government is a quasi trustee...so no bonuses for bailed out companies. All others can do what they want. You sound like a good guy I wish you the best in your business (the next one, cause you can’t keep a good man down).
Their defintion of what a recession is differs from the OFFICIAL and ACCEPTED definition.
The only thing NBER has in common with anything Conservatives know about is Paul W. McCracken who is also a trustee of American Enterprise Institute or (AEI).
I'm still turning over in my mind whether AEI should be considered Conservative or RINO. After all, they, themselves tout "The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post publish more op-eds by AEI scholars than by scholars from all of the other D.C.-based think tanks combined."
Getting your stuff published in the anti-semitic Washington Post doesn't mean all that much anymore, and the NYT? Give me a break.
So, who should we believe, AEI, or this other group, or the NYT, or the Washington Post, or our own eyes ~ the definition of a recession is that you gotta' have two quarters of decline, not just one, and December 2007 doesn't cut it in that calculation.
Conservatism and Republicanism is so screwed. We might as well start throwing the clods on the coffin if the idiots on this forum think they are going to get anywhere with the notion that these banks are “private” companies any more. This is public money, which they took, and these idiots had no choice but to take it because these idiots have no idea what a productive enterprise is. Had they, they wouldn’t have bankrupted themselves chasing paper profits at 60:1 leverage.
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