The sky is purple, there is ice all over the place (and the sidewalks are worse than the roads), and it is cold as hell.
I’m still livid about the Bank of America nonsense from last night. I really don’t know what to do with these people. I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked or surprised, but at this point I am not too far from supporting a drive towards nationalization of the banks and the financial system and the summary execution of the CEO’s in a public ceremony on the Washington Mall. I really don’t know what else to do. You try to maintain an appropriate level of cynicism regarding this stuff, and every time you increase your level, these jackasses come along and outperform even your worst expectations.
And do we get to start calling them welfare queens now? I mean, a couple stories of poor people with widescreens in government housing fueled several generation of hatred towards poor folks, what should this do:
When a company borrows billions from a nation of folks who are struggling to pay their basic bills and put food on the table and pisses it away on new offices, luxury jets, and getaways to resorts, something needs to be done. At the very least, there needs to be a new name for them, something akin to “welfare queen,” that we can use to brand these people for life. I am seriously sick of these people. And where are the religious nutters like Dobson? Isn’t “Thou shalt not steal” somewhere up on the list of commandments, or is he too busy dealing with the plague of the gay?
Going to be a long day.
smiley
It’s not new but how about Robber Barons?
TheFountainHead
I have an idea. Lets put Gitmo in a "transitional period" and toss all these knobs in there.
Zifnab
This was business as usual, John. BoA didn’t run off and fire all the Republicans that work in it just because they picked up a $20 billion stimulus. If anything, I’m sure they justify running this show specifically because their accounts believe – in their hearts of hearts – that unionization will further weaken the economy.
But, at a certain point, when you cut a bank a check to keep it afloat and proceed to take absolutely zero control in how the institution is run, the institution won’t get run any different than before you bailed it out.
Ask Warren Buffet what he’s been up to at Goldman Sachs since he took a large stake in the company. You better believe he’s got guys crawling all over that firm, cutting perks and trimming budgets and reigning in costs. This is, ultimately, why a lot of people don’t like the idea of governments meddling in business. Government likes to preserve the status quo and the status right now is anything but quo. So you can be pissed. And you can be disgusted. But please, don’t give us the "No one could have anticipated…" line.
liberal
I agree, but the main reason is because otherwise we taxpayers are effectively giving hundreds of billions to banks for free.
Screw that.
Montysano
Since this post is under the Assholes tag: Eric Cantor was interviewed on Morning Edition this morning. Three times he was asked "If you you don’t like the stimulus bill, what would you like to see added to it", IOW "What are your ideas?" What followed was babbling, inane bullshit, and world-class asshattery that made me want to punch holes in the wall. He truly is one of the Worst Persons in the World.
As to bankers: Thain, he of the $80K office chair, recently said that his bonus was justified because without his guidance, things might have been even worse. Perhaps I’ll try that strategy here at my job and see how it goes.
DougJ
I know this much: Thain deserves a tax cut .
Hawise
Bailout Kings because let us face facts- the bulk of these execs are men who never got over begging mommy for candy money and needed to personalize "their space" before they could do their homework.
I also like calling them whiny babies.
new day rising
Three inches of fresh snow here in Ro Dilan. They say it will turn to rain and pour later. What a mess that will be.
As for the poor bank CEO’s, I’m feeling very generous today so I plan to call my bank and turn my savings account over to the suffering downtrodden man at the top and suggest he use the money to get a fancier executive bathroom trash can. It’s the least I can do.
DougJ
I guess that disproves the whole “global warming” theory.
Zifnab
This is what separates the men from the boys. A competent Republican would have just looked the camera straight in the eye and said, "Tax Cuts" without breaking out into a giant shit eating grin. Cantor has to babble on like a moron for twenty minutes whining about how he can’t figure out why national parks and birth control are going to save the economy.
Laura W
Wait till you lose power and are left with nothing but your lividity.
There’s always journaling, scrapbooking.
This.
R-Jud
…or lovingly handcrafted effigies, which can then be burned for warmth and/or s’mores.
Conservatively Liberal
Getting their cut of the pie by playing along with the big boys? Dobson and his ilk will not change their tune until they detect that their masses demand it. Until then they will remain blithely oblivious to what is going on, all that matters is that they maintain the status quo until the situation demands change. "Change" meaning the less change flowing into their coffers then the more likely they will be to ‘revise’ their message. Cash matters to these people, little else. Cash is their God.
This whole mess just sucks ass and we have the Repubs to thank for it. Yes the Democrats get blamed too but most only for their spinelessness and willingness to drop trou, bend over and grab their ankles every time a Republican asked them to. Repubs own this mess and I will not let them forget that, nor will I let the Democrats to forget that they did little to stop it.
The last fucking thing I want to do is listen to advice from a Republican officeholder or one of their too many shills. Obama is leading right now and until he gives me a reason otherwise I am going to follow.
At least someone is leading us now. No thanks to the Republicans though, they never really were interested in leading. They are more into ownership.
Evinfuilt
They are truly the modern Robber Barons. I see no difference between the early 20th century and 21st century versions.
Punchy
Not surprised that these petulant fux are too busy changing each other’s diapers to support Teh Clandestine Mooslem Halfrican, but seriously, ZERO? Wow.
If I’m Obama, I dedicate an entire speech to pointing out just how disinterested the GOP is in helping out Americans. Call their bluff, then explicitedly shove this rancid behavior in front of all Americans.
Svensker
The thing that bothers me most about this (aside from the fact that I agree executions are a great idea and I’m trying to be a Quaker) is that, if these guys are still acting like this, cluelessly going around spending money on fooferaws — I don’t think we’ve bottomed out on this economic crisis. If the guys at the top aren’t really scared yet, we’ve still got a long way to go.
That scares me.
Comrade Darkness
"A different economic environment?"
WTF? The guy is a moron of the highest order if a year ago he didn’t see the outlook we have now. Things were already falling into the crapper and he was an *insider*.
JeebesusH
GAh. Hangin’s not good enough. I want to see them suffer while attempting to pay back some modicum of what they’ve stolen. I want these losers working in the freezing cold and burning heat of the desert building affordable housing on a reservation or something. With a big guy with a whip overseeing them.
The Moar You Know
When it’s done by Big Money, the term is "responsible corporate governance."
Seriously, why do you seem to have such a problem understanding this? There have always been two sets of rules, laws, and mores; one for the rich, and one for the rest of us. Did you really not see this before?
Montysano
@Conservatively Liberal:
The Villagers are starting to sell the meme that "Obama has xx time to fix this, and then he owns it". I think it may be different this time: I think/hope that this will always be remembered as Dubya’s Clusterfuck. If not, then we really are too dumb to have a democracy and deserve whatever we get. But my mantra is "you controlled Congress for 12 of the last 14 years, and the White House for the last 8 years".
Governance entrusted to those who don’t believe in it.
Juan del Llano
This is a fine post. I agree with every word.
It’s incomprehensible to me how these bloodsuckers get away without being ripped to shreds by starving mobs. Beyond that, it’s even more unbelievable that anyone, anywhere, ESPECIALLY in government, gives this outlaw class any credibility whatsoever.
The outrage is obviously not shared. You know what that means: bigger & better mobs! Either that, or go on about our business while waiting for the inevitable Wrath from on High. Any omnipotent creator that could make a brontosaurus vanish should have an easy time of it with the steenking bankers. Go, God!
Hell, who trusts mobs, anyway?
Comrade Dread
Rifle. Bullet. Blindfold. Brick Wall.
You can figure the rest out, John.
Welfare a$$holes, works for me.
Joshua Norton
And yet that’s the entire business plan of the wingnuts’ beloved Walmart. Poor people have some money. They should give it to us and we’ll sell them all the cheap crap they can afford to wheel out of here. And cheap medicine, too. Except for birth control because having children doesn’t really cost you any money. And we’ll cash your welfare checks for only $3.00.
There’s a lot of money to be made out of one-stop poverty shopping if you have no scruples what so ever.
D-Chance.
What’s the problem? Thain merely used $1.2 million on "office infrastructure". He employed carpenters, framers, woodworkers, apprentices, journeyman laborers… he put America back to work!
Stimulus, man, S-T-I-M-U-L-U-S!
flounder
I hope there is some money in the stimulus for Wakizashi swords and seppuku mats for these disgraced executives.
AkaDad
The problem is regulators looking over the shoulders of business executives, it makes them nervous, which then causes them to make mistakes.
In other words, government is the problem and they’re clearly responsible for ruining the economy.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
We used to have some pretty good names for them – like "capitalist pig", "overprivileged twit", and "fucking asshole" – but they were demonized as over-the-top rhetoric and "molotov cocktail throwing from the Jane Hamshers of the left" by people like… well, people like you before you became one of the good – or at least, better – guys,
.
Glocksman
@Comrade Dread:
You forgot the traditional last cigarette.
Give them union made Marlboro Reds to go along with the traditional Red revolutionary Mosin-Nagant 7.62mm lead injection.
They can ask for a non-union Camel, but then they forfeit the blindfold.
Terri
Maybe a revival of the Phoenix Program used after the Tet Offensive would be in order, retooled for the coporate world.
Glocksman
Or flying lessons*
*Throw them out of a helicopter and if they learn to fly before hitting the ground…
Rick Taylor
I wouldn’t take it personally. Given our culture, corporate CEO’s are responsible for increasing their company’s profits as much as possible, that’s what they’re supposed to do, just as a defense attorney is charged to do everything legally in his power to help his client. If they didn’t, they’re shareholders would be angry with them. If we give them money with no strings attached and they use it the way they’ve always used it, well, who’s the fool then, us or them?
Mixing capitalism and socialism gives you the best of worst of both worlds. We should either let the banks fail, or we should nationalize them. Since the first is unthinkable, we must do the second.
joeyess
How about calling them what they are:
Capitalist Pigs.
Some things just hold up over time, you know?
Like Pink Floyd’s "Dark Side Of The Moon".
Ash Can
@D-Chance.: Don’t tell us, tell his employees, shareholders, and board of directors. I’m sure they’d be falling over themselves to give him a goddamn ticker tape parade for making their company such a shining paragon of generosity to the freaking building industry.
passerby
Congrats John, looks like you’ve still got electricity.
When I read weather reports this morning that said some WVA folk might be w/out power for days because of ice storms I wondered if some would miss the Superbowl and were it to happen to me I’d be writhing in my own skin.
Evidently for you, so far, so good.
How do (you) people heat your homes without electricity? Is there a furnace in every room or do you have to sleep by a fireplace? (serious question)
BTW, we should come up with a term that’s beyond Welfare Queen. Something that more appropriately describes the supra-galactic excesses of these sheister-istic bank folk.
As someone suggested, Robber Barons is a good start but a think we need a title with a little more insult to it. I’m at a loss. Words cannot describe the disgust I feel about this chicanery.
Ash Can
Hey, we don’t know for sure — they might really be queens.
passerby
@Rick Taylor:
Agree. And, it could be a temporary government takeover to get through a transition phase.
Cyrus
Not speaking for anyone in particular here, but I’m pretty sure gas heat doesn’t require electricity. And you seem to be underestimating the power of furnaces and fireplaces, at least in a house designed with even a minimum of consideration for them. Sure, with nothing but wood heat it’ll get pretty cold at times, but nothing that can’t be handled on a day-to-day heating cycle.
Comrade Dread
I didn’t want to expose the riflemen to second hand smoke.
I take it personally when Welfare a$$holes put decent people out on the streets for falling behind on payments while their executives go panhandling for money to spend on union busting, private jets, and spa retreats and suffer zero consequences.
At the very least, these a$$holes should have mobs of peasants throwing rotten tomatoes at them every time they set foot in public.
TenguPhule
Dead men walking.
MH
How about calling them what they are – TRAITORS to the nation.
If I was the butler/personal cook/maid to one of these CEOs, I would find it very, very difficult to refrain from breaking mercury thermometers into their food, or gathering the americium from fifty smoke detectors and stuffing it in their pillow.
TenguPhule
TenguPhule
TenguPhule
Unfortunately, shareholder meetings are designed to make it as hard as possible for shareholders to do anything unless they personally own large percentages individually.
passerby
@passerby:
I’m not a banker or economist so I’m just spit-balling (as usual) here.
1. Government freezes all accounts and "assets".
2. Government enacts laws that set limits, create standards on risk, and establishes operational regulations.
3. A de-valuation / re-valuation of currency takes place.
4. Government hands back the reins to bank officers and investors.
5. Violators of the new system would be hanged for treason.
passerby
@Cyrus:
Thanks. The reason I ask is that some old homes, like I lived in inNew Orleans, only had a gas furnace located in the center of the house–not very efficient but winters are relatively mild so no biggie. So yeah, we didn’t need electricity to heat (unless you use a portable fan to help distribute the hot air).
Here in E. TN I’ve got central heat (elec) and some gas logs in the living room. It doesn’t happen often and hasn’t happened yet but if I lose power this winter, I’d have to set up camp in front of the fireplace and wouldn’t be able to do any cooking (elec stove, arrgh) or, more importantly, wouldn’t be able to watch the Superbowl.
So I was just wondering what kind of heat you yankees..uh..I mean northern folk use. Coal? Heating oil? I confess my ignorance.
Will C
@John Cole
Nationalization? Are you kidding me? Two banks, Citi & BoA misbehave and you want to punish the rest?
Have you thought of the consequences of such actions in your own backyard? Just across the state line in Pittsburgh, Mellon, PNC, and Dollar areflourishing because they made sound decisions. They made Mellon take the bailout money after they refused it. Mellon was easily able to cover their Lehman exposure and they wisely weren’t exposed to subprime assets. The Fed however felt the need to push on them the money. PNC? They got bailout funds because they were the only healthy bank in the region that could put up enough funds to buy troubled banks, but didn’t want to, so the Fed gave them money to do it that would also cover exposure they would be taking on. Dollar is seeing a rise in their business cause they made only sound loans during the era of exhuberance. Now they can pick and choose the best to make loans to cause they are the only ones loaning.
So all three get nationalized, do you know what happens then? Ever so slowly they will suck the high paying jobs to NYC, DC, and Philly. People lose jobs, western PA just gets worse.
Another consequnce? Less corporate sponsorship for local sports. First the Pirates go, then the Pens, and last after the economy in the area completely collapses, the beloved Steelers move in 20 years. Probably to somewhere like LA where no one would appreciate them and they’d be renamed something stupid like Angels.
Think twice about nationalization!
CatStaff
Well, John, then you’re really not going to like this latest from the WaPo via TPM:
"Explicit nationalization of financial companies has little support among key Obama officials, sources said. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and top White House economic advisor Lawrence Summers believe governments make poor bank managers and cannot efficiently manage a vast number of institutions, according to some of their associates.
Taking over a substantial portion of a bank’s stock and wiping out the investment of the firm’s other shareholders could also precipitate a sell-off across the banking system as investors flee, fearing they could be next."
Yeah, because the highly-paid ninnyhammers the banks have had running them have done such a bang-up job.
Oh, and I’ve always liked "bloated plutocrats" as a description of these new welfare queens.
Rick Taylor
Only the ones that cannot survive without the government shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars into them. And temporarily, until we can sort out their worthwhile assets and find new owners for them. The swiss did something similar during their own meltdown, and it worked pretty well. It’s the least bad of awful alternatives. Letting them fail would bring about economic apocalypse; almost no one is willing to support that. Propping them up the way we are gives us the worst of both worlds. If banks don’t want to be nationalized, they shouldn’t invest heavily in fantastically complex derivatives they do no understand that tank when housing prices fall causing a worldwide financial crises.
Reddalestew
@DougJ: Hey Doug, there a phenomenon that it occurs every so often. It’s called Winter. Get a clue!
binzerator
@Comrade Dread:
I disagree. I see no reason to waste perfectly good blindfolds.
Al Swearengen
George Carlin put it best: "arrogant, overpaid, overfed, overpampered, overpriviledged, overindulged business criminal asshole cocksuckers"
jim
Not so new, but accurate: parasites.
Chris Johnson
I’ve seen this before- in the dot-com days. Back then, I said that that world was doomed BEFORE the crash. Sure enough, it crashed, because when otherwise sane people are saying ‘I can’t understand how X’ and X is happening, it’s almost certainly not sustainable.
My prediction: there is gonna be blood. Not as much as you might think but class warfare will be a literal truth. You may notice it in inverse form- for instance a poor woman and her kid gunned down by a private security force which is then never held responsible in any way… the thing to watch for I think is private security forces like Blackwater, gated heavily armed enclaves of the wealthy, and keep an eye on those Halliburton-built internment camps scattered quietly around the USA. It might not end up being government that uses them at all.
Look to signs indicating two ‘governments’, the civil government which will be strapped for cash and overloaded, and sort of balkanized corporate or class/geographical fiefdoms.
Sort of like Somalia, except that instead of drug gangs with AK47s it’ll be- I dunno, Big Pharma exec communities with castle walls and AK47s. So all right, drug gangs :)
pattonbt
@Chris Johnson:
Dont know about the rest of your post, but this
"when otherwise sane people are saying ‘I can’t understand how X’ and X is happening, it’s almost certainly not sustainable"
Is too true. I am by no means a financial wiz, but I get the basics and macro level stuff pretty well. And when astute professionals say ‘I dont understand’ then I steer clear.
As with Enron, plenty of non insider paid analysts were screaming to anyone who would listen that ‘things dont make sense’, but the paid insiders ignored all the signs because it was in their financial interest to ignore.
My simple philosphy – invest in only that which I understand, spread risk and dont gamble. I wont become Warren Buffet but I wont lose everything either. I will end up with a nice quiet, sufficient nest egg to live my small contented life.
J.Dunkle
You are all right about the subject at hand, BUT what is to be done and who would do it (nothing and no one) so we must live with it until someone can do something about it. When that comes to be I will be right behind them.