Posted on 02/12/2010 8:12:27 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Paul Krugman is, I think, right to be amazed by Obama's embrace of the $17 million bonus given to JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon and the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
If Obama's idea of moving to the middle politically is to embrace Wall Street's too-big-to-fail banks, he's crazy. Usually Republicans are the party of Big Business and Democrats of Big Government, and the public's hostility to both more or less evens the politics out. But if Obama now becomes the spokesman for Big Government intrusiveness and the apologist for Big Business irresponsibility all at once--good luck with that.
And look at the tone-deafness of Obama's comments about the bonuses:
"President Barack Obama said he doesn't 'begrudge' the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay. The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is 'an extraordinary amount of money' for Main Street, 'there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don't get to the World Series either, so I'm shocked by that as well.'
'I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,' Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. 'I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system."
First of all, as Krugman points out, "irresponsible behavior by baseball players hasn't brought the world economy to the brink of collapse." Nor has the federal government spent billions (trillions?) bailing out baseball owners after they signed foolish contracts. Nor does it guarantee baseball owners'--or players'--future solvency.
And second, doesn't Obama realize how creepy this statement is? "I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen."
This confirms the suspicion that we now live in a world of crony capitalism, where if Obama knows and thinks well of you, then you don't get criticized--but if you're some guy who hasn't spent a lot of time cozying up to government leaders, then you could easily be the object of demagogic assault by politicians.
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST
Kristol can be pretty good at times
We know that this is ALL about statists and statism. And the ONE is in bed with them whether they are progressives on the left or not.
Why aren’t they screaming about Julia Roberts making $20 MILLION for ONE stinking MOVIE???
(no offense, Julia - just using you for an example)
Hollywood is FULL of numbskulls making HUUUUUUUUUGE money for ‘acting’ in the crap it turns out for us. Why does nobody care about THEIR ‘obscene’ profits???
And this, coming from the obama administration... Hey barack, just exactly how did YOU become a millionaire back in Chicago, huh??? -From community ORGANIZING? Please explain THAT one??
"IF".... <- Bill Crystal is delusionary..
Kristol lost ‘it’ a long time ago. Just like the ‘cluck’ Klugman, ignore. Trying to reason with a fool and soon no one will know who is who or what is what.
‘I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,’
How the &*&*&% would he know? He’s never run a thing...this is like a homeless guy endorsing a real estate agent...”oh yeah, he’s good”...gimme a break.
Without these huge bonuses and large salaries to tax, they will have to come after the rest of us. Never mind, that, the consumer is paying these taxes through the products that the company produces.
Both parties are the parties of Big Business. Conservatives are against Big Government, Big Labor, Big Business; especially when these interests triangulate to circumvent our Republic and limit our freedoms.
The reason the salaries and other pay of actors and athletes does not garner outrage, while that of corporate managers does (and rightly so, though why I feel this as an advocate of free-market capitalism requires a bit of explanation), is that actors and athletes are 1. not deciding on each other’s pay packages and 2. not being paid as fiduciaries for other peoples’ interests and property.
Corporate managers including CEO’s, CFO’s and boards of directors are supposed to follow the example of the old robber baron Jay Gould, whom the left loves to vilify for saying “The public be d*mned”, leaving off the rest of his reply, “I work for my stockholders.” When compensation packages cease to be tied to delivering value to shareholders, or protecting shareholder value in downturns, managers are being paid for something other than doing their jobs.
However envious we might be of actors and athletes pay, they are being paid to act and to play some sport at an exceptional level. Bonuses paid to managers who have misjudged the market, driven their company’s share price through the floor, or even contrived to make the bonus triggers something too far removed from shareholder value to meaningfully correlate with it, are bad for capitalism because they are bad for the capitalists. Remember the capitalists? The folks who put their money at risk in the market in hope of getting a good return? Now days, that’s most of us by way of pension funds, IRAs, 401(k)’s, mutual funds, or simply direct investment in stocks.
Unfortunately since most shares in most companies are now voted by institutional investors (mutual funds, other corporations, pension funds) managers vote on managers pay packages, and they are easily persuaded to vote in the interest of management even when it’s against the interests of the shareholder whose interest *they* are being paid to look out for.
The professional manageriate is the Western version of Djilas’s New Class, whether they are in business, the non-profit sector (e.g. university administrators), or government (and the same people often float between all three spheres). Obama is one of them—he worked with Bill Ayers to manage a worthless education project in Chicago, probably the most substantial job he held before he rose to his level of incompetence as a legislator. So are his entire cabinet, so was Kenneth Lay of Enron infamy, and the management of all the failed banks and bailed-out banks, and of GM and Chrysler both before and after the government take-over, and on and on.
The problem we have is that we have an economic system with the form of capitalism, but except for small businesses, by and large, it is no longer controlled by the capitalists.
It is natural that at least a large segment of the manageriate would embrace Obama’s fascism. A fascist organization of the economy and the state gives the managerial class nearly complete power.
I think the realization of this at an intuitive level is what is driving the Tea Party movement, which is mainly directed against Washington, but unlike most right of center movements also has an animus toward Wall Street. (As well it should under the present circumstances.)
This confirms the suspicion that we now live in a world of crony capitalism...
That is right. You donate to the DNC, like Goldmine Sachs, etc., then you get big bonuses of taxpayer money.
“That is right. You donate to the DNC, like Goldmine Sachs, etc., then you get big bonuses of taxpayer money.”
Oligarchy anyone.
Easier than you'd think.
Goldman Sachs Will Be Sitting Pretty With Emanuel in the Obama White House
By: Timothy P. Carney, Examiner Columnist, Nov 21, 2008
Goldman Sachs always has clout in Washington, as evidenced by the firm’s alumni serving as Treasury secretaries under both Presidents Bush and Clinton. Today, in these tumultuous times of bailouts and meltdowns when the investment banking leviathan needs Washington more than ever before, Goldman can leverage its most valuable asset yet—incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Goldman Sachs is the giant of Wall Street, and more than any other investment bank, Goldman is surviving the current financial storm.
Traditionally a Democratic booster, and one of Barack Obama’s top sources of funds in this past election, Goldman has always had some particularly strong allies within government. Emanuel is one such ally. An interesting early chapter in the Goldman-Emanuel relationship took place in the setting of Bill Clinton’s campaign for the White House in 1992. Clinton hired Emanuel as his chief fundraiser.
At the same time, however, Emanuel was on the payroll of Goldman Sachs, receiving $3,000 per month from the firm to “introduce us to people,” in the words of one Goldman partner at the time. This is certainly a noteworthy relationship, but it’s one that has almost entirely escaped scrutiny. (snip)
In his four terms in Congress, Emanuel has raised $74,750 from Goldman, making the firm his number four source of funds. Goldman has helped Emanuel. How has Emanuel helped Goldman? The most obvious answer, as mentioned in this column two weeks ago, is in Emanuel’s lead role in shepherding the “$700 billion” bailout—first proposed by former a Goldman CEO, Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson—through the skeptical House.
Of course, back in the Clinton days, Goldman benefited from NAFTA and the bailout of the Mexican currency, with Emanuel pushing NAFTA through Congress, and Rubin hammering out the peso bailout. Did Goldman improperly funnel money to the Clinton campaign by subsidizing Emanuel’s salary in 1992? Did Goldman’s help to Clinton spur the Democratic president to push NAFTA and the Mexican bailout?
The answers to these questions are opaque, and with Emanuel burrowed deep within the Obama White House, the continued relationship between Goldman Sachs and Obama’s right hand man won’t be easy to follow.
Watch which regulations of Wall Street Obama fights for. Watch where the bailout money goes. And don’t be surprised Goldman soon sitting pretty once again.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/TimothyCarney/
THINGS WE DO NOT KNOW ABOUT RAHM Did Wall Street Rahm reveal all of his ties to financial institutions involved in Obama's trillion dollar federal bailout of financials.......like Goldman Sachs, for instance?
Billy Kristol (McCain campaign mastermind)
"Thank you very much. But I could not have done it without the help of all the
punkeos--David Frum, Michael Gerson, David Brooks, Richard Perle.....and
my Dear Departed Daddy."
"Sniffle---my Dear Departed Daddy (Giuliani's foreign policy advisor) said,
"The historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism is.....to convert
the Republican Party and American conservatism in general, against their
respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to
governing a modern democracy."
"Sob."
"I especially want to thank punkneo Douglas Feith for faking documents on his
home computer so we punkneos could dupe Pres GW Bush."
"Without Doug we would not have been able to transfer trillions of US tax dollars
into the Mideast, into the pockets of war profiteers, which enabled Richard Perle
to startup an oil business in Iraq with his cut."
Kristol smirked: "Making Iraq safe for Perle's oil business with US tax dollars was truly a noble punkneo effort."
==============================================
COMMENTS The 2008 political entrail readings showed the crucial conservative base stayed home. Too bad the pukes "forget" to tell McC that would be one outcome of the punkneo-RINO bi-partisanship. Be aware that many senior neocons are rank opportunists who squatted in the Repub Party for their selfish stealth purposes-----they are actually former Trotskyites that flew the coop when Stalin executed their hero.
AS FREEPER TADSLOS COGENTLY POSTED: "People forget that candy-ass Kristol, and his crony, metro-sexual Brooks are the original makeover artists for McCain post-2000. They are McC's original groomers and media switch operators.....obsessed with religious cleansing of the party. Kristol at his most smirkiest---urging McCain to fire his 2008 staff, to start all over at the 11th hour, as McC's numbers tanked. Shows how how ill-conceived, advised, equipped and poorly managed McC's campaign was. But then, what else to expect from a Republican candidate made up of neopunks Kristol and Brooks."
"Kristol pushed for McCain early on, then calculatingly "supported" Palin only to move the political winds. Watching Kristol smirking and squirming in his Fox seat election night as McC lost was a consolation prize to this abortion of a losing 2008 election cycle."
Bingo!
PASS THE WORD To tea partiers, 9/12 marchers, pro-lifers; defense of marriage, 2nd amendment, anti ObamaCare, anti-amnesty, anti-cap/trade conservatives. It's in our hands to dictate the terms by which we support candidates.
HOLD CANDIDATES' FEET TO THE FIRE These are the terms under which we conservatives permit candidates to earn our support:
(1) The candidate must renounce RINOS and pukeneos before he/she gets conservative endorsement.
(2) Your group's issue is affirmed in the candidate's platform;
(3) Your group is in attendance at all campaign strategy meetings;
(4) Your group holds a paid job in the campaign;
(5) Your group holds a paid position in the winning candidate's elective office;
(6) Your conservative group holds an official position within the campaign;
(7) Your group nominates several top appoinments to the candidate's election team.
====================================
HOW TO HANDLE THE RNC
When you receive an RNC fundraising call or letter, simply reply: " In lieu of a contribution, a donation in your name has been sent to the Scott Brown Relection Committee, the 2nd Amendment Committee, the NTL Right to Life Committee," etc.
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