A big Merry Fuck U Christmas from the Uber Wealthy

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

You may have seen this already, if you subscribe to Alternet, but in case you haven’t, there’s a very heart warming holiday story about the 10 greediest people in America.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read it.   Why raise the blood pressure, why feel bad if I don’t have to?   Can’t I just ignore this, since I’m powerless to do anything about it anyway?

Well, then I read it.  I’m a glutton, right?    And what surprised me about this, this list of piggish financial gluttony, is not just how it even surpassed my expectations as to what greedy corporate assholes these people are, it’s the fact that I hadn’t really heard of any of them.

I pride myself on being pretty well informed, although I don’t go into too many details, especially those of business, it’s just to mind-numbing to dive into that world.   I like to sit back and look at the big picture.   So many that’s why I didn’t recognize hardly any of these people.

Or maybe there’s just so damn many of them, and so many of them are flying under the radar, that most of us still have no idea how we’re being robbed, constantly, and by how many robbers.

Or maybe whoever wrote this is just a damn good journalist.   They admit their goals was to seek out a wide spectrum of greedy bastards:

The Great Recession’s greedy don’t just sit on Wall Street. They occupy perches of power throughout the reeling U.S. economy. So we’ve tried, in this our latest annual ranking of avarice, to survey that bigger picture.

If you’ve ever felt guilty for thinking that these people need to be heavily taxed, or worse (Marie Antionette’s fate comes to mind), you won’t after reading this.

Here’s a little sample.

10: Richard Anderson

America’s airlines have been flying, for the most part, under the media radar ever since the nation’s banks went into meltdown mode, and that suits Delta CEO Richard Anderson just fine.

Delta, now the world’s biggest airline, has been richly rewarding Anderson ever since he became the airline’s top exec in September 2007. If folks were paying attention, they might wonder why. Delta, after all, lost $8.9 billion in 2008. In 2009, Delta and other U.S. carriers, says the International Air Transport Association, will likely lose a combined $1 billion.

Passengers are certainly feeling this red ink. Delta and other carriers have been trimming seating capacity, a move, notes the Orlando Sentinel, designed to “enable them to raise ticket prices more often.” Delta is also squeezing passengers with airport bag fees. In August, the airline’s bag charges bounded to $20 for the first bag and $30 for the second.

Anderson and his family, meanwhile, don’t just fly free on Delta. The airline also pays the taxes due on Anderson’s free tickets — and lots more, too.

For agreeing to become Delta’s chief, 28 months ago, Anderson picked up $8.5 million in stock awards. Seven months later, another $3.4 million. Six months after that, to celebrate the Delta-Northwest merger, more options to buy Delta stock, worth $7.3 million, and more actual shares, worth $6.1 million.

With all those rewards, Anderson must be devoting every waking hour to making Delta soar, right? Well, almost every waking hour. Anderson has been spending some of his precious hours serving on the corporate board of Medtronic, a medical tech firm. In 2009, from the good people at Medtronic, he’ll pocket $188,000 for his directorship services.

(snip)

8: Steve Wynn

Last February, Las Vegas gaming industry kingpin Steve Wynn announced an across-the-board wage and hour cutback for all employees at his resort empire. The total savings for Wynn Resorts: between $75 and $100 million.

In November Wynn Resorts announced a special $4-per-share dividend. Total cost of the dividend payout to Wynn Resorts: $492 million. Total dividend check that will go to Steve Wynn: $88.6 million.

Wynn currently rates 141st on the annual Forbes list of America’s 400 richest. But his fortune has faded some $900 million, to just $2.3 billion now, since last year. A typical American family, according to Census Bureau figures, would have to work nearly 18,000 years to make $900 million.

Wynn, ever the trooper, isn’t crying in his cocktails over his near-billion-dollar misfortune. He “rang in” the 2009 new year skimming the Caribbean on a 183-foot mega yacht, then went on to spend lovely winter days dodging gossip columnists on the Riviera and in the Alps.

You gotta love it.  

These people will continue to do this kind of stuff until they are FORCED to stop.

And who’s gonna force them?    Obama?    

That’s funny.