We the People Owe Them How Much? 
The Wall Street Journal reports the stunning detail that the collective bonuses and pay-outs
owed to the executives of the banks we are now bailing out exceeds $40 billion. You read this correctly. Goldman Sachs $11.8 billion, J.P. Morgan Chase $8.5 billion. Morgan Stanley $10 billion. These are corporate IOUs. They are not provided for in the banks, and would have to be drawn from future earnings. Now you can see the genius of Andrew Cuomo (right) announcing that he wants to review bank executive pay above $250 thousand, and joining Henry Waxman of the House Oversight Committee to demand a review of this year's bonus plans for the big nine banks that were all forced to accept tens of billions from Treasury on Monday 12. A Treasury treasure hunt review. Commissar of Fortunes. We are months from moving to announcements on the floor of Congress that those owed vast sums on the basis of contracts drawn up before the TARP II bailout are under suspicion. We shall see. It won't take much for a member of the 111th Congress to stand up and demand that Treasury cancel the bank obligations to its executives. The argument is clear. "Why should we pay these characters for wrecking the banking system, plundering the credit markets and driving their banks into pennilessness and beggary? They owe us!" Just add to this, as taught by the Greatest Genius of All Time Josef Stalin once upon a time, a chant, "Death to the Banker Wreckers!" Canceling all bonuses will please almost everybody except the banker wreckers and their lawyer wreckers.
Taxes for Bankers is Redistribution
The Marxist poetry of the days ahead is that we all get to consider that our taxes are going to pay the bonuses of men and women who are vastly richer than we are and ever could be. We are redistributing our pennies into the hands of our pound foolish masters. Is this a distortion of the present state of affairs? I think not. What else is the logic that we the people rescued the wrecked banks and so we the people rescued the bloated characters who supervised the wrecking of the banks? Now we begin to see what a failure of will the TARP II bailout was for the Congress, for the culture. The idea of free enterprise has been compromised to the point of wrecked, too. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, except if he or she is a banker and the need is for a fortune. Does any man or woman who earns bonuses from Citi or Wells, Fargo or J.P. Morgan not depend upon our public treasury? Same for Goldman or Morgan or Bank of America? The Wall Street Journal checked with Hank Paulson and his Goldman Sachs vets at Treasury about the power of the TARP II to direct how banks compensate executives:
Asked about the Journal's calculation, the Treasury said, "Every bank that accepts money through the Capital Purchase Program must first agree to the compensation restrictions passed by Congress just last month -- and every bank that is receiving money has done so."
Now could these compensation restrictions possibly allow $40 billions to be handed out to a list of the wealthy? When we read at year's end of the bonuses being paid at Bear, Sterns or Morgan, do we smile or do we say, earned how? Do we get a list? Do we get to challenge the list? And then there is this sweet detail that the Fannie Mae executives were owed $500 million at the end of 2007. The comment to the Wall Street Journal from the Fannie Mae spokesperson was, "Deferred compensation belongs to the officer who earned it." Earned? How did Fannie earn anything but ignominy and felony charges? Fannie is a bank robbery since '05 at least. And we the people are going to pay half a billion dollars to the men and women who belong in textbooks about fools, liars, sneaks and saboteurs?
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Maybe we should rethink the stated position of one running for President of the United States when he says we need to build wealth from the bottom up?
It fits. Maybe? Just a thought on dualism and power.
Think of all the taxes imbedded in the payoff that can go to the lessers who then can send it back up to the newly made lessers who can then send it back up to the newly made lessers
Mon tete exploser!!!
Many thanks Mr B for your forum and your patience with us all.
I'm sure everyone who contributes feels the same appreciation
Re: The continuing mystery of Obama's birth certificate: Why would any man running for POTUS dance around the issue of his own birth certificate? Is it perhaps, because he is not a citizen, as the Constitution demands? Not likely. That would be too obvious and invalidate an election win to boot. The reason Obama's birth certificate remains in hiding is that it would show him to be a Muslim - signed and sealed by the local imam.
Perhaps we need to just follow Nancy Reagan's advice and Just Say No! Since the Power rests with the People, who vest the Government, we should have the Right to Withhold the Power by simply refusing to file a tax return in April. If the whole country simply went John Galt on the Treasury, what would happen? In the words of Bartleby, I prefer not to.
The Progressives have been polluting the American experiment piecemeal these past 100 years. They may be on the cusp of doing irreparable harm through their Slow Bolshevik Revolution. They have turned our Founders' values upside down such that we live in an Orwellian dream state, where the unproductive are paid to remain fallow, where the hard working are punished by the Government for their successes, where we are told submitting to Tyranny is Patriotic, where crying out for Liberty is denounced as irresponsible and subjects one to Government background checks, where pointing out someone's ideas are anti-Constitutional is racist, where foreign monies buy the Presidency without concern, where the educational system has impressed fascist speech and thought codes on the student bodies and thereby driving yet another generation into greater ignorance and thus further from what our Founders intended.
I say ENOUGH! The time has come for those of us who have a modicum of literacy to stand up and shout in Reaction to this hundred year trend down this stinking rathole. Are we cowards? Would we bow down an lick the bootheel of these miscreants who have polluted The Great American Experiment? We must shout loudly and forcefully the original ideas of our founders - communicate the words of Samuel and John Adams, of Patrick Henry, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin. Our current cast of pretenders to their legacy are an embarrassment - from the White House to the People's House to the Ginsburg/Souter/Kennedy/Stevens block on the nation's highest Court who look to foreign laws for guidance instead of the Constitution. Nonsense! Enough!
Actually, I 'd like to see Boards of all public companies and Not-for -Profits be more assertive negotiating employment contracts with executives. If a given executive runs a company into the ground and leave with a fortune, it is the Board's fault.
Bravo novanglus, Bravo!
John,
Love the Patrick Stewart/Serjanus reference, but if I remember from I. Claudius, Serjanus was shown the door. Bill Richardson has just downgraded the Obama Tax Threshold to incomes of $120,000. Looks like Team Obama is playing "Tax Limbo" now. This will punish this country with "Trickle Up Poverty".
There is a Reuter's article today quoting Barney Frank who is beginning to make that exact argument. He said something to the effect the he is disapointed that banks aren't lending the money out the way that they are supposed to and that the money may be going for things like bonuses and severence pay. How long before the public anger turns from the bankers to their enablers in Congress?
John,
I spoke too soon. The NY Times is confirming that the Team Obama Tax thershold is now $100,000. Anu bets where it will be at Market Close on Monday?
Tonight, I conducted my first unscientific polling which I will call “The Trick or Treat Poll” witch was performed entirely in the confines of my modest home in a mid sized city in the middle of America.
Disclosure : This polling survey has an error of 13 % based on the well respected Zombie ratio that has been accepted as the percentage of the population that are undead who are likely to invade your home on any given Halloween night during a national election year. Also, relevant to the data is the fact that most of the terrified citizenry have anticipated this scary night by hoarding sweets that they believe will ward off the danger, though, previous polls have shown conclusively that garlic garlands and Christian crosses tend to be more effective than just handing out candy to the mindless creeps. Other considerations are the phase of the moon, alignments of planets, and of course, whether or not the light on the porch is on. For more information on the intricacies and reliability of this exercise, please go to the spider web page www.reclusespider.web (Not really!!!)
Results show a depressed number overall from previous years, but, especially noticeable were the lack of vampire like creatures, who apparently have lost their sweet tooth; werewolves, that have this year completely disappeared from the data (although this is totally based on outward appearances and not necessarily demeanor); and walking medical experiments ( the most frightening of all) who are stubborn like creatures that don’t have good verbal skills and are in need of intense therapy and love. The undead in their various manifestations remain with us as anticipated, but, the ghoul numbers have fallen drastically and substantiates the trend that was predicted several years ago.
Whereas, cartoon characters and super heroes, aliens, Jedi Knights, princesses, and beatnik type hippies with peace signs and tie dyes have made great inroads and have shown the most stable grouping, accordingly. Witches will always be a substantial force to reckon with and one hopes they will not cast their spells pell mell, even though they may have been shortchanged in the past. Surely, they understand that we all appreciate their contributions of brew and concoctions and their research into alternative medicines.
From this pollers perspective, the numbers are down (off the charts) and the dentists are going to feel the crunch long term, as well as, foreign costume manufacturers, clove garlic sales will plummet, and, possibly the most serious implication is that pumpkin seeds will need to be preserved in a seed bank for future generations.
Any comments to this pseudo analysis or if you would like the full report and analysis of this survey, please visit the not really a website and request a copy, or, just print this page.
If, in the rush to furnish liquidity to the credit market, the government gave the bailout money without conditions that it was not to go to pay bonuses, then shame on the government regulators. If there were no conditions addressing the compensation packages for the guys who ran their companies into the ground and then came to the taxpayers for help, there's no way to make them give it back or refuse the payments.
What I want to hear more of a discussion about is this: There's a clause in the Constitution that prohibits the government from legislation that interferes with contracts. The shareholders whose investments were wiped out by the seizure of Fannie and Freddie had contracts that were abrogated by the government. Those shareholders also were victims of a "taking" without due process within the context of the 5th amendment. I think we haven't seen the end of the bailout from the standpoint of court cases that could be brought against the government for the loss of shareholder investments.