Almost nobody WANTS to be held responsible for a negative result! (4.00 / 5)

But should this keep society from exposing the wrongdoings and from calling the offenders to task? Certainly not! Really, what kind of ethics show in Fass's statement? It's a shame.

And is there any rational argument that ANYONE should earn 200 millions a year? Hey, did those guys raise the welfare of the nation by an amount that is a multiple of that number? No, they didn't, quite to the contrary, they are parasites that draw off money that would provide much better results for much more people if spread with a wider scope!

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by: Gray @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 13:00:09 PM UTC

greed+ (4.00 / 4)

To paraphrase Mark Twain; There is no limit to man's inhumanity to man in the name of profit.

The rich and powerfull don't need advantage, they need restrained!

Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob..... FDR

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by: reggiewhitefish @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 13:36:05 PM UTC

My takeaway from the article (4.00 / 1)

was that Wall Street is stiffing Obama and the Democrats, who had hoped that 1/3 of the 200 plates, each of which is for sale for $30,400, would be bought by the financial industry. That's gratitude for you!

Also, the fundraiser is in Manhattan, not Greenwich.

Decarbonize, Deglobalize, Demilitarize

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by: Brad Klafehn @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 13:37:58 PM UTC

Niccolo Machiavelli would be proud (4.00 / 5)

If you measure their IQs, communications skills and other talents against the rest of the population, I think most of these people would fall on a line along with doctors, accountants and lawyers.

A doctor's average salary runs between $120-200K.

A CPA gets between $40-110K.

A lawyer gets between $45-155K.

http://www.payscale.com/resear...

These guys would earn between $50-200K if they were working for a legitimate business.

Face it. Wall Street/Treasury/Fed is little more than an organized crime syndicate. What many of these $1-200 million people really deserve is time in jail for felony crimes.  

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by: Michael Harold @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 13:46:55 PM UTC

But , but, but...those brave Wall Street guys handle BILLIONS! (4.00 / 2)

Just like the captain of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier. Cost: 4.5 billion dollars. And I'm damn sure those folks don't earn 200 million bucks a year, even though they have to bear much higher responsiblity.

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by: Gray @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 14:52:39 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

They super-rich are the new victims, feel their pain (4.00 / 9)

Did everyone see this astounding piece in the TImes?

The vehemence in these e-mail messages made me wonder why so many people were furious at those who had more than they did. And why are the rich shouldering the blame for a collective run of bad decision-making? After all, many of the rich got there through hard work...

"They feel mischaracterized," Mr. LaMothe said. "They know the time and effort they contribute. They fund scholarships and all the things they do routinely, and then to be characterized as not doing their fair share begins to wear on them."

"ALL THiS ANGER AGAINST THE RICH MAY BE UNHEALTHY"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10...

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by: david mizner @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 14:02:21 PM UTC

What's really unhealthy is being poor! (4.00 / 5)

And it sure looks like reading such idiotic op-eds isn't really good for one's blood pressure, too.

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by: Gray @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 14:56:58 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Whaa Whaa Whaa (4.00 / 5)

So they "give back". Big whoop. Compared to what they take and break, it's like shooting someone and then handing them a $20 for cab fare to the ER. The capital that they effectively steal or destroy could have been vastly better utilized had it not been filtered through their sleazy operations. Hey, insurance companies do pay for decent health care for SOME people, so they must be saints who are unfairly demonized too!

Brother, can you spare a billion dimes?

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 15:23:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

What a great analogy - (0.00 / 0)

it's like shooting someone and then handing them a $20 for cab fare to the ER.

The above $250,000 income crowd complains....

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by: Upward and Onward @ Wed Oct 21, 2009 at 00:55:05 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

wow, just wow. (4.00 / 3)

so nauseating. I just learned that my progressive populism is really a psychological disorder. who knew?

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by: the new @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 14:49:33 PM UTC

Imho, being human is evidence of a "psychological disorder". (4.00 / 2)

If you refer to Paul Goodman's comment in that other thread, that's how I read it. But it sure was phrased in a misleading way.

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by: Gray @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 15:00:35 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Progressive populism (0.00 / 0)

You may have just coined a term. I like it. So true!

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by: Upward and Onward @ Wed Oct 21, 2009 at 00:56:23 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I have no problem with anyone earning this much money (4.00 / 4)

So long as:

1 - They actually earn it, lawfully, not steal it, or by ruining peoples' lives in the process.

2 - They do it with their money, or money borrowed from people who had a choice in the matter, and not with taxpayer money.

3 - They preferably do it in a way that makes the world a better place.

None of these above apply to these banksters, so they can just STFU and stop whining like someone just took away their Rolls. Let them eat Gray Poupon!

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 15:16:53 PM UTC

It's also certainly a problem having finance exist as 20% of our economy, (4.00 / 3)

given that there's no product there. At that point, it's just shuffling around money in a way that exposes us all to risk.

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by: sb @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 15:21:20 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Well, there is SOME product there (4.00 / 2)

It's just that it's far less than 20%. We do need banks, lending, trading, liquidity, etc. But we don't need anywhere near as much as we have now. It's like private insurance. What it does is necessary. How it does it, though, and the profit that it extracts while doing it, is clearly unproductive and wasteful. We need to find fairer and more efficient ways of doing both.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 15:29:23 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

At Project Syndicate, in his October contribution, (4.00 / 2)

Professor Stiglitz says what needs to be said. He says it more gently than David does, but I think just as pointedly:

Borlaug and the Bankers

To me, the most astonishing thing about all of this is the degree to which these folks are willing, even eager, to tempt fate. I understand that socially powerful people, cocooned as they are in their own good fortune, can come to view fate as pure superstition, but one would think, given their experience at managing large, complex enterprises -- those of them who do -- that they'd be acutely aware of the fragility of civilization.

Perhaps they are, but perhaps they also believe that they're smart enough to stay on top of the wave, and leave such carnage and devastation as necessarily follows in their wake for others to clean up. That makes sense to me. They don't read Keats, and if they did, they'd no doubt dismiss him as someone who never had to meet a payroll. In their view, the ruins of the Forum Romanum exist because people weren't as smart then as they are now, and are useful these days, if they have any use at all, mostly as a place to to send their children, so that in later life, the kids can say that they've been there, and done that.

These folks are asking for -- begging for -- a revolution. They're daring us to see beyond the cages that they've convinced us are a result of forces beyond our control, and to master the organizational skills which might help us undo them and all their works. They really don't think we're up to it. So far, they've managed to bring every would-be Spartacus back in chains and crucify him beside the Via Appia. Why shouldn't they be able to do it forever?

Why indeed? I suppose we should be grateful, at this point, that we read history and they don't. Now all we have to do is make some use of what we've learned.

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by: William Timberman @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 15:48:55 PM UTC

It's Not Really Tempting Fate (4.00 / 3)

It's more complicated, perhaps. Criminals tend to repeat their activities over and over until they get caught. You could say they're stupid. You could say they're trying to get caught. The Balloon Boy incident this past week is a classic case.

For me, it's a pathology. People on Wall Street are fairly smart but no more than the general population in all other professions. They've simply been in a cocoon where everyone else is like them, and made money the way they made money. They'll keep doing this behavior until they're slapped in the face.

I'm disappointed if Obama made the statement he did, that people have a right to make $200 million. For a former community organizer, it shows either real weakness (naive, gullible) or his true colors. Taxpayers who put up trillions for the public infrastructure that makes any wealth possible, we deserve a return at least equal to what an investor would make.

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by: TSlavin @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 17:13:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

"They really don't think we're up to it" (0.00 / 0)

Quite right, a populist revolution that is.

They don't read Keats, and if they did, they'd no doubt dismiss him as someone who never had to meet a payroll.

Tell us a poem that's appropriate!  

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by: Upward and Onward @ Wed Oct 21, 2009 at 01:11:32 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Try this: (0.00 / 0)

I was thinking of Ode On a Grecian Urn, especially this part:

What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

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by: William Timberman @ Wed Oct 21, 2009 at 02:04:06 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Nice (0.00 / 0)

If that town Keats describes is us, woe to this country.

Try this, slightly more contemporary (as a good poem should, it leaves the question open; what do you think?):

Poetry Of Departures by Philip Larkin (1976)

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.

And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
It's specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said

He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.

But I'd go today,
Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.

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by: Upward and Onward @ Fri Oct 23, 2009 at 22:54:30 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Slave owners (4.00 / 2)

Ever read some of the things that slave owners and their apologists wrote in the 1840s and 1850s.  They certainly "felt persecuted."  And slave owners also wanted the rest of the country to act weirdly to support them: a fugitive slave law to be enforced ruthlessly, for example, in Boston (abolition central?).  Preachers who preached to slaves about their duty to their masters and how escaping to freedom was a sin.  Warping the Fort Sumter situation to the point where US soldiers withdrawing arms and ammunition from a federal armory was provacatory and said rifles must be returned.

Yes, the slave owners kept pushing it.  Pushing the extension of slavery.  Pushing political parties to stand for foreign wars to extend slavery.  Declaring any attempt to limit the extension of slavery an immediate cause for war.  Demanding that abolitionist newspapers in the North cease publication.

Yes, slave owners felt persecuted because they knew they were losing the argument.  Monoculture tends to depolete the soil so to keep things going as the soil of the old slave states was depleted, slavery had to expand.  First to the lower south (Georgia, Alabama, Mississipi, Louisiana, west Tennesse, east Texas, Florida) and then ... Kansas? Nebraska?  Arizona? Cuba? Nicaragua?

Similarly, these folks know they are losing the argument.  One can make an argument for inventors and innovators getting really rich.  Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison.  (of course, the degree to which Gates, for example, profited might be questioned or better yet taxed).  If these folks have a chip on their shoulders, it is because they know in their heart of hearts that they are getting too much at others expense.

To broadly paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, they stand on the brink of Armageddon and do battle for their unearned billions.  Make that trillions.

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by: David Kowalski @ Wed Oct 21, 2009 at 08:24:55 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

The historical fulcrum (0.00 / 0)

Yes, I have read Southern defenses of their peculiar institution. And yes, I do suppose that they were afraid that it was doomed, although that fear was never as explicit as hindsight tells us that it was. I've also read Lincoln's Obama-like response in the Cooper Union Speech, particularly this part:

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

This is widely interpreted today as having been a threat, rather than a last-ditch attempt at reconciliation, but that, again, is an interpretation which benefits from hindsight. I would say that Lincoln clearly saw how history was moving, and wanted to make explicit what he saw. Southerners, on the other hand, most notably John C. Calhoun, were afflicted, in my opinion, by a sort of demented Platonism, and thought that a careful and self-serving rationality could render them immune to history's demands.

This is never a good idea. It wasn't then, and it isn't now. What's not clear, though, is that the reasons for advancing it anyway, ill-advised as they may be, are in any way irrational.

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by: William Timberman @ Wed Oct 21, 2009 at 14:50:32 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The DSCC under Menendez is worse for Dems than Schumer was.. (0.00 / 0)

...and you'd think that the timing for a Wall Street fundraiser couldn't be worse, publicly for the Prez I mean, right?
We also know they hope to profit off of the huge successes now seen on Wall street thanks to their pro-Wall Street protectionist actions.
However, and very lucky for us, the DSCC coffers will still remain abnormally low after their fund raisers, thanks to that Muslim guy in the White House, and little money will be available to re-elect those pro-Wall Street insurgent capitalist bastards in the coming years.

That's the good news. The bad new is that the other capitalist bastards on the Supreme Court may step in before the next election and effectively hand to Wall Street the keys to the House, and the Senate.

Nationalism is not the same thing as terrorism, and an adversary is not the same thing as an enemy.

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by: worldlymother @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 17:51:46 PM UTC

Where are the bloody pitchforks? (4.00 / 1)

Really, this is the sort of arrogant, condescending, self-entitled bullshit that ought to have millions of Americans marching against Wall Street demanding their money back.  It's the sort of royalist excuse-making that that turns the stomach, for it exposes the truth that We the people are nothing more than fodder to these vermin.  What's more, Obama's bullshit is a flat out lie: there are very good reasons why these criminals shouldn't be pulling in millions of dollars, namely, that they do so at OUR expense, that they use unscrupulous means to do so, and that these practices can and do result in devastating consequences for the rest of the nation.

Obama, being part of the wealthy establishment, is wholly out of touch with average Americans.

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by: Michael Kwiatkowski @ Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 18:58:55 PM UTC