Posted on 02/02/2009 4:11:55 PM PST by careyb
I wonder what Claire McCaskill would think of this.
Compared to the graft Obysmal will be paying out to supporters and friends, these bonuses will be chump-change.
I saw this IN CONTEXT!!! She was not advocating a policy only explaining an explanantion given. Do not shoot the messenger. She was giving info, not opinion. Odd to hear on MSM today
Somebody here give me some guidance. I hate socialism, but something here appears to stink.
In the businesses for which I have worked, bonuses are paid out only under two conditions - both of whch must be met...
1) The business must make a profit.
AND
2) The individual must do outstanding work.
Great work but no profit = no bonus for anyone.
Lots of company profit but lousy work from the individual = no bonus for the individual but bonuses for others.
So just how do failing companies and the boards that govern them justify awarding mega-bonuses to those (the CEO, vice presidents, department managers, etc.) who are responsible for the failure?
Just asking.
Plenty of places have country markets which are profitable, but worldwide may be negative.
Plenty of bonuses are contractual, based on top line sales, like marketing, and scale accordingly.
So it depends. But it's not the role of government and surly people like 'never held a job' Odummer/Obiden to make the call. It's up to the business and their shareholders. The last you ever want is a top down salary structure. It will insure the worst rise to the top, like what happened in the Soviet Union. Profit is a motivator and reward structure all in one.
She is about as ditzy as they come. She is totally socialist. The look on her face when the bailout bill failed the first time was classic.
You missed a third component - it was the companies’ money.
This is taxpayer money making up these bonuses, which Burnett failed to point out.
Methinks Burnett is friendly with these executives in more ways than as news sources, to defend this practice so illogically.
If I were a board member, I sure would vote to replace the top of any company that needed a bailout for bad really bad management.
That's the point I see getting lost. It's not the bonuses per se, it's not replacing the management what run the companies into the ground on their watch that is the real problem. Remember Ken Lay, well it looks like a lot of people have forgotten that.
I strongly disagree. She gets a lot of cheap shots from many class conscious posters on FR, but is one of the sharpest on CNBC and a devout capitalist. She outshines Bartiromo by far.
I’ll give a personal example. I’ve been in a position for several years where more than 1/3 of my compensation is in the form of a “bonus”. I get a salary and then, if I achieve specific goals, get some or all of my bonus ... after the year concludes. In 2008, I had a specific goal to generate a certain amount of revenue, and a separate goal to achieve a certain amount of profit. Again, both were specific and measurable & they were items I had direct impact upon (if I failed to do my job, the objectives would not have been met). Net-net was that, although other areas of the company didn’t perform against their goals, I did. I got my bonus because I did what I committed to.
Looked at another way, I had a contract with my company to perform a job. The conditions of the contract were that I’d get 2/3rds of the pay as the year progressed. I’d get the remaining 1/3rd if I met the terms of the agreement, per the company’s expectations. If I’d just spent the past year struggling in one of the toughest economic environments in my lifetime, only to have some Washington bureaucrat brow-beat my employer into failing to honor their agreement with me, I’d sue.
That’s not to say all of the bonuses that are being criticized and rescinded are bona fide, as mine was. And it’s not to say that they’re not often large relatively or absolutely. I just don’t believe it’s the imperial federal government’s right to interfere with an employer’s right or obligation to meet their contractual obligations to their employees - regardless of where they are on the pay scale.
We must be very careful about what the Dem’s are really doing here - this is wealth-envy in disguise.
Your company didn't get bailed out by the federal government. Essentially these companies were bankrupt. Do you think if your company went bankrupt they would pay your bonus? I doubt it.
These companies took money that was supposed to make them solvent and gave it to employees. It's now gone from the operating budget and guess what those companies want more funds from the feds.
A responsible company would have said to an employee owed a bonus. We have no money to pay the bonus. We will give you warrants or preferred stock in lieu of cash now. That way if they did find a path back to solvency they could then pay off on the warrants from future profits. If not then at least our tax dollars were given the best shot at helping the company to continue in business.
Instead these crooks breached a fiduciary responsibility they had when they partnered with the federal government. They should be brought up on charges of fraud for what has happened. Oh. I forgot most of them are democrat and this was just a way of making sure future political donations will keep coming in. We wouldn't want anyone to have to sell their house in the Hamptons would we.
And this is how you get a corporate death spiral. Company fails to meet obligations to key employees. Employees leave en masse to competitors, who are fully prepared to pay competitive wages, signing bonuses, stock options, etc. to attract proven talent. Company receiving bail-out money, but with government strings attached, completely fails. All bail-out money is lost, with no hope for recovery.
The fact is that we each own our skill-set and will, within reason, make these skills available to the best employer. Conversely, the employer wants the best skills for the least expense. A willing seller meets a willing buyer, and a deal is struck. When one doesn’t meet the other’s expectations, the deal is off.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m as p.o.’d as anyone that we’re bailing out these firms. For capitalism to work, failure must be allowed. I just know too many good workers, that did good jobs delivering their results are getting hosed because another distant arm of their company, related only by balance sheet and common ownership, went toes up.
And in the meantime, Nancy Pelosi has her own 757; Congress votes itself a $93,000/yr. increase in their annual stipend; and Washington Dems are doing the level best to ram $300+ BILLION is pork down our throats; and Al Gore is out preaching about global warming again!
I think this is a point people are missing. These companies were Terminal. They pigged out on a toxic drink that would create a terminal cancer. The analogy being that sure there were still healthy organ functions occurring in other parts of the body but the company is going to die. Now when a business dies they can cut off functioning parts and sell them or float them as private business entities. This usually happens in bankruptcy where creditors and a judge gets to decide how to divvy up the rotting pile of flesh and bones.
Now if they were to go bankrupt yes some of those functioning parts may jump ship. But now guess what this wasn't the only company that drank the drink. So where are those key employees going to go? The answer is nowhere. So what happened here is these companies lied to everybody convinced the feds to give them money then they proceeded to give it out to a select few so they could weather this perfect storm in relative comfort.
I just know too many good workers, that did good jobs delivering their results are getting hosed because another distant arm of their company
Yes but under your previous posting those good workers over the past few years received greater bonuses because, before the bubble burst that toxic brew was actually generating cash. The overall problem was they were selling a ticking time bomb. So the good guys did reap a benefit a couple of years back and didn't complain or jump ship. Everybody was taken in by the money and thought they had found the goose that laid the golden egg. Much like investors in the Madoff fiasco. Nobody was complaining when they were making 24% a year. No one wanted to question that maybe something fishy was going on.
What irks me is these guys knew what kind of shape their companies were in and took the money and then paid off bonuses they had no business paying given the current state of the company. I suspect they knew they couldn't put humpty dumpty back together again and so they sucked the money out of the company. Now if they had to go into bankruptcy within the next few months I believe (though I'm not an expert in bankruptcy law) that the bonus money would be fair game for a judge to order it be paid back and the employees would have to get in line on the list of creditors and see if they have enough standing to get the money.
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