Nothing really changes with these types of people. <object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zrzMhU_4m-g&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zrzMhU_4m-g&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>
I understand it better than you: The top five executives at Bear Stearns made a total of $1.4 billion from bonuses and equity sales between 2000 and 2008, while the top five executives at Lehman Brothers made around $1 billion during that same period -- the period during which the companies ran up the bad investments that would see them collapse in 2008, according to "The Wages of Failure": http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/bebchuk/pdfs/BCS-Wages-of-Failure-Nov09.pdf (PDF), a report from Harvard Law School's Program on Corporate Governance. "The people who invested in these companies should feel betrayed," Nell Minow, a compensation expert at the Corporate Library, told NBC's Lisa Myers. "The whole idea of capitalism is that the people provide the capital and the executives take care of it for us. In this case, the people provided the capital, and the executives took it." http://rawstory.com/2009/11/nbc-ceos-cashed-in/ Conservatives without conscience, indeed.
In many ways the mortgage bankers were employing the same level of corruption as Enron, but because they had the political clout, instead of punishment for their sins...they were rewarded with massive bailouts, bonuses, etc. What is completely absurd is these claims that Obama is a socialist, as he was following the same strategy as Bush... A real socialist would not have allowed the banks or executives at these banks to profit the way they have...
Boomberg news service notes that "shareholders who held their shares throughout the period analyzed in the report lost most of their initial investment." The period analyzed was 2000 - 2008. There were plenty of bagholders in that time frame with many equities, not just BSC and LEH. ********************* "One issue that may stir interest amid cutbacks on campus is whether Ms. Mendillo, or any Harvard managers whose investments did well, receives a bonus. There has been conflict over the years about whether Harvardâs endowment should pay its managers the kind of bonuses that are typical of Wall Street. Seeming to anticipate this, Ms. Mendillo took pains in her letter to explain the endowmentâs compensation philosophy, noting that a managerâs compensation was determined by measuring performance against a benchmark in a way that aligned his or her interest with that of the university The school also has a clawback provision, which requires a manager to perform well over several years to justify a big bonus for a single year."
Logic doesn't enter into the vast majority of the right-wing attacks on Obama. Some of these pinheads call him a fascist and a socialist in the same breath. All they care about is attack, attack, obstruct, obstruct, even if it means hurting the country as a whole at the same time. They have become nihilists, at least as dangerous to America as Muslim extremists.
The problem I have is that these same people are the ones who blindly defended Bush for 8 years, want to act as if Bush never did anything wrong, and have been in attack mode against Obama from day 1. They consider themselves patriots, yet they never stood up against many of the exact same policies that Obama is implementing, when they were implemented by Bush... ...and they wonder why they lack credibility on the issues?
Question, maybe a bit off topic but how does Obama inspire you? Perhaps people had a bit more confidence in Bush thereby "blindly "defended him. On another note, Bush could seek counsel from his Dad as a confidant, after all he was a president and former CIA. This has to count for something. Who can Obama turn to, when he has tough decisions? Who are the men in Obama's life? Who is Obama's mentor, who does he look up to?
Obama does not inspire me, I was not a fan of Obama during the primary, and he was the lesser of two evils compared to McCain and Palin. I have no doubt that McCain would have followed the same path Obama has, except the heath care nonsense. McCain would have escalated the defense spending dramatically... Bush could have sought counsel from Bush 41, but it is well known that Bush 41 was opposed to invading Iraq. Obama does have Buffet and Volker in the fold, and Mr. and Mrs. Clinton are on board... I don't know who Obama looks up to, and I don't know who Bush actually looked up to. Bush's decision making was pathetic...and if you believe in the follow the money theory, who benefited most under Bush? Not the majority of Americans, that's for certain.
Disenfranchised Americans, with their own sense of entitlement (not necessarily invalid); their anger, while justified, is misdirected. How convenient for our hidden elites.