(10:00PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
Last Friday, I wrote about how 10% of $700 billion bailout is to cover Wall Street banker pay and bonuses.
At least one member of Congress is awake. None other than Rep. Dennis Kucinich has called for an investigation. According to The Guardian —
Kucinich, an outspoken Democratic opponent of the US taxpayer’s $700bn bank bail-out, said his staff would immediately begin asking Wall Street firms set to benefit what plans they had to distribute bonuses.
“When Congress placed restrictions on excessive executive pay, it had no intention of permitting business as usual with respect to bonus structures,” he said. “It would add insult to injury to ask taxpayers not only to bail out a firm, but to pay for bonuses as well. The Guardian’s report necessitates an immediate inquiry.”
Why in a time when banks are being bailed out by the American taxpayers, do they still believe they should award bonuses to their executives and other employees?
Because —
Banks continue to peg pay deals to net income. One banking source said 45-50% of net revenue – paid largely in salary and discretionary bonuses – remained an industry standard. This formula does not take into account the huge losses by bank shareholders, many of them pension funds, as firms have queued up to slash the carrying value in their accounts of toxic assets, predominantly sub-prime mortgage-backed securities.
Right.
At least Kucinich isn’t asleep in Washington. Unfortunately, I fear Speaker Pelosi will let him get about as far with the Wall Street bonus investigation as she did with his articles of impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
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& thank YOU magnifico! for bringing this to my attention.
YOU really are the BEST!!
for helping to drum up capital investment in their companies, even if it is from the government?
:-/
from my formerly functioning three computers is taking time and effort. I have a pdf file of a corporate document that essentially states the corporation can and will bring the full brunt of their professional legal resources should you a lowly “employee at will” do something contrary to something called global anti-public corruption complicance. Yes, ya’ll are totally up to speed on that one, aren’t ya.
In short it is totally sad that only ONE of the 535? assholes in congress is immune for some reason to the Illuminati mind control programs.
http://stationcharon.blogspot….
Think about it.
…on the one hand, yes, you want to serve shareholders by preserving capital. On the other hand, at most of these places, everyone is paid partially through bonuses. At firms like Lehman and E&Y where I have friends, even the secretaries are paid partially through bonuses, not merely executives. And I don’t think that the intent of Congress was to cut salaries across the board at these places either. Further, to the extent these companies have assets, it is their employees, and failure to compensate talented workers is a sure way to entice them to leave.
This is part of the problem with the entire bailout idea. The incentives for the firm, for the stockholders, and for the Federal government and the taxpayers are all different and in conflict. I don’t think this is a simple situation where the firms are blatantly wrong and Kucinich is blatantly right. Indeed, part of the problem of having Congress oversee the banks is that they don’t really have any idea what they are doing, but still have political considerations to motivate them to act.
I can’t say enough about Dennis Kucinich — he is unshakeable and he is right. We are, indeed, blessed that he is steadfast in his quest for us and the U.S., as is Cong. Wexler and Sen. Sanders, Feinstein and just a few of those in our govenment to whom we should give thanks — unfortunately, the numbers are simply not strong enough, which is indicative of those WHO really care about WE, the people, and this Country.
Off Topic (and I hope you don’t mind)
Here is a pretty clever sing-song in re Palin!
considered the “move” more than one of, yet, another “raping” of the Administration of us. The fear-mongering of Bush has worked every single time — the world will blow up in smoke, if . . . .! And, so it goes. Is anyone really all that surprised to see where a tenth of the money is going? I’m not! And, they’re (Paulsen and Bernanke) at it again — calling for yet another infusion of monies, as I see it, only somewhat disguised.
It’s just amazing how many times BushCo can cry “wolf” and it works, over and over and over again!
It strikes me that since the assets/liabilities of Merrill, Lynch, and others were taken over by others, that the same might have happened with AIG, but, of course, we couldn’t wait for that event or possibility — hell, no, the sky was going to drop on us all if we didn’t infuse major sums of money into the system.
As one of the diaries mentioned, the German bankers have conceded to not taking any bonuses, etc., as have others, but, no, the greed in this country lives on despite a possible economic collapse. Mind you, it is the GREED that will be the ultimate failure and demise of this country.
Almost all my life I realized that there were some (me included, up to a point) who thought that the point here was to get rich.
The massage therapists (sorry to single you out, but, hey, it’s an example) were out to get rich, so they charged “too much” and I never got a massage.
Here’s the truth, as I see it. No one, hardly, gets rich. So, let’s scale back, just a bit.
Let’s see the value in a job well done. Let’s appreciate quality as it is before us (it’s all around us, even now).
We don’t need to be rich. We need quality. We need more love. We need more to be with each other and to appreciate each other.
Can we let it go? Can we learn to appreciate what is in front of us? Can we learn to let go and let love? Can we see what is in front of us?
This isn’t rocket science. It’s about seeing what is here and appreciating it.
I wish I was better at it. I wish you the best, too.
Go Dennis!
…and Congress’ falling over backwards to reward the Street I think that the financial speculators must have accrued an awesome amount of power. Here is the question we ought to be asking: what would happen if execs on the Street did not get what they wanted? Oh yes, it might have something to do with powerful Congressmen/women losing some campaign contributions and jobs for in-laws–but I think it is deeper than that. I genuinely believe that these people must have the power and willingness to bring the country to its knees. If that is so, as I think it is, then what else can the Congress do?