The addendum to this story is that the outrage over Sheridan's firing led to a blizzard of press from news articles to interviews which put enough pressure on Ski Co. to relent and offer their apologies for having him dismissed. He has been allowed to return to Sneaky's Tavern, but has not taken them up on the offer.
Mr. Sheridan, as a former ski instructor and displaced ski bum, you have my everlasting respect.
{extended} ]]>“Big Money”
By Dan Sheridan“I was walking my dog, down the old walking trail,
When I ran into a posted sign, pending future sale
To some Hollywood mogul, who feels that he should
Build a mansion in the mountains, his “cabin in the woods”They come here from Miami, they come here from L.A.
And bring a part of a city, that will never go away
Like a fear of strangers, accelerated time
The sound of car alarms, in a town without crime
Like quaint wooden fences, patrolled security
Setting up borders where they never used to beCHORUS: Down in their graves you can hear the miners sing
Big Money ruins everythingWell it happened in Aspen, and down in Sante Fe
It happens everywhere, when the locals move away
Because we can’t afford to live here, we can’t afford the rent
Unless we win the lottery, or live in a tentI think big money sucks, please write that down
Please take a look what it did to this town
Trophy houses, trophy wives,
Trophy people leading trophy livesCHORUS: Down in their graves you can hear the miners sing
Big money ruins everythingSay goodbye to all the artists, and people who can ski
Say hello to private golf courses, and elective surgeryI think I’ll build a billboard, at the entrance of this town
If you came to prove how rich you are, please just turn around
Please turn around, high tail and run
you probably already ruined where you coming fromSo I went to the hardware store, but it has been replaced
With a boutique for trophy wives, with a reconstructed face
All it only sells handbags, stuff you’ll never need
Like fine Italian shoes, or tasteful jewelry
So we blame it on the landlords, blame it all on greed
We blame it on the excess, of the nouveau richeCHORUS: Down in their Graves you can hear the miners sing
Big money ruins everythingHow did this happen, how did it occur?
Women driving Hummers, men wearing fur!Now I sing at corporate parties, make them feel like a kid
Because I play acoustic guitar, just like John Denver did
But they don’t listen to my words, the words I’ve been singing
I’m just here to fill the void, between cell phones ringingI recently found a letter, that I wrote to myself
It said, “If you get old an bitter, you better move somewhere else”
But I ain’t going nowhere, I won’t give up on this town
I won’t give up on my friends, Who somehow stick aroundCHORUS: Down in their graves you can hear the miners sing
Big money ruins everythingWomen at the Caribou, with liposuctioned hips
And in the name of balance they re-inflate their LipsCHORUS: Down in their graves you can hear the miners sing
Big money ruins everything”
"They're saying that my staff -- at least two members -- did know [about the financing], and I should have known, and I'm being admonished for that," Rangel said before the report was released.
{extended} ]]>
"We are looking into a number of questions related to Goldman Sachs and other companies and their derivatives arrangements with Greece," Bernanke said, testifying before the Senate banking committee.
{extended} ]]>The nascent shift came even before the White House announced proposals for a new tax on banks and a curb on some of their riskiest trading activities. [WAPO]
{extended} ]]>There are plenty of good resources you can read to get up-to-speed on the case so I won't bore you with the details. For a good recap read: The Atlantic - Bank of America's Fraud Charges are Very Serious
I'd like to focus on the money. Bank of America wrote off losses of nearly $4 billion dollars after absorbing Merrill. Then, proceeded to conceal the losses, lie about $15 billion in bonuses, then asked for approximately $45 billion in tax payer monies to help the Merrill "merger".
OK. So a judge ruled that Bank of America must settle it's feud with the SEC, or the SEC's feud with Bank of America, by paying a $150 million fine. Seems fair, it's not like we should expect Bank of America to repay the full $4 billion they stole from investors. That would be unAmerican.
$150 million is an unfathomable amount of money to an average middle class schmuck, but to a CEO ...
When Ken Lewis finally leaves Bank of America, his severance package — which is based on his track record of building an empire, then looting the shit out of it — will be in the righteous neighborhood of $125 million. By any measure, that is one helluva goodbye kiss.
A serial thief will be honored with one of the largest severance packages in American corporate history.
This is unacceptable on so many levels, but it shines a glaring light on the bankruptcy (and collusion) of our so-called "justice" system.
{extended} ]]>According to the Bennett Report, which was released this morning, Bennett concludes that Barry sought approval of Watts-Brighthaupt contract after he loaned her money to help her pay her bills. After Barry secured the contract for Watts-Brighthaupt, he then forced her to use her paycheck to repay him.
The Bennett report also looks into the 41 earmarks that Barry sponsored in fiscal year 2007, which totaled about $8.5 million.
{extended} ]]>In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, Dimon, who has a million-dollar salary, said he had received nearly eight million dollars in JPMorgan Chase shares for 2009, with options on an additional 563,000 shares.
In 2007 Dimon received 28 million dollars in bonuses; he declined to take any compensation other than his salary in 2008.
{extended} ]]>“Trust me,” Mr. Steele said, “after taxes, a million dollars is not a lot of money.”
He should know ... Mr. Steele is a bonafide millionaire who is suffering mightily under the weight of his fortune. While we do agree that he looks a bit pale for a plutocrat, we simply suggest that he loosen the collar on his $3000 custom-tailored suit to allow his gold-plated heart to pump blood to his malnourished brain. Oh, and treat yourself to a cookie Mr. Steele. Everyone, no matter what social class you belong to, deserves a cookie.
Who exactly is he talking to? The students at the University of Arkansas are not attending an Ivy League school. And, it's likely safe to argue that they don't all come from insanely wealthy families whose money has been used to grease palms in Washington since the founding of the country.
The average income in the United States of America is $50,000 per year, before taxes. Assuming the average tax liability is approximately 30%, the average American family lives on $35,000 per year.
Michael Steele and the Republicans are arguing that President Obama's campaign to raise taxes on families earning over $250,000 will hurt average Americans. If the "average" American earns $50,000 dollars, the increase in taxes only affects the top 3% of the income-earning population.
During his lecture, Mr. Ford mistakingly believing he was speaking at Dartmouth, sarcastically asked, "Who in here makes a million dollars a year?". According to reports, not a single student raised their hand.
Apparently, realizing the error in his ideologically out-of-touch argument, Steele immediately did an about face and tapped into his faux populist roots retorting, “How many of you want to make a million dollars a year?” Umm ... Everyone … You pandering, blathering, hypocritical, creepily elfin buffoon.
In Mr. Steele's world, and the Conservative's Pandora, a million dollars is pocket change.
Anyone with a calculator can figure out with a few button presses that a salary of $1 million dollars is 20 times the salary of the average American.
Even if the tax rate for high income earners was established at 50%, and you were lucky enough to be earning $1 million per year, who wouldn't be "OK" with living on a half million dollars per year?
Mr. Robert Frank asks his readers a simple, absurd question to close out his article, "Do you think $1 million pretax income is “a lot of money?”
As a member of the "great unwashed" masses, allow me to confirm that "a million dollars is a shit-load of money."
{extended} ]]>The amount, although eye-popping by Main Street standards, is smaller than the stock-based bonuses his rivals received for 2009. On Friday, J.P. Morgan Chase said it would award $17 million to chief executive Jamie Dimon.
In a regulatory filing, Goldman said Blankfein received restricted stock Friday worth just shy of $9 million based on the firm's closing share price of $154.16. Two years ago, Blankfein set an industry record by receiving a $68 million bonus, about a third of it in cash, after his firm made $11.6 billion. He took no bonus in 2008, when profits plunged during the financial crisis.
For 2009, Goldman reported a record profit of $13.4 billion. The firm's $16.2 billion compensation pool for 2009, which includes pensions and other benefits, translates to nearly $500,000 an employee.
Ever the populist, Blankfein turned down his 2008 bonus, a reported $43 million, due to "poor job performance" and simply accepted his $600,000.00 salary. In 2007, Blankfein set an industry record by receiving a $68 million bonus on top of his half million dollar per year salary.
{extended} ]]>In a statement, Gary G. Grindler, acting U.S. deputy attorney general, said "the alleged illegal conduct undermined U.S. efforts to ensure that corruption has no place in international trade."
"Bank of America, through its top management, engaged in a concerted effort to deceive shareholders and American taxpayers at large," New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a statement. "They committed an enormous fraud, and American taxpayers ended up paying billions for Bank of America's misdeeds."
Additional civil charges are expected.
{extended} ]]>$400 million.
$45 million doesn't seem so generous does it?
Here is a novel idea ...
Are you irritated yet?
First, it is worth noting that bonus pools for most of the major banks were significantly higher during the years when no one was paying attention.
Secondly, it is worth noting that $120 billion in bonuses were handed out in 2009, the worst year on record since the big dust bowl (yes, that's one hundred and twenty billion dollars).
Thirdly, consider how much more money these crooks have made in interest, investments, and purchases from their bonuses
Finally, pour a little salt on the wound and ponder how many billions of dollars worth of federal taxes remain unpaid due to fact that these crooks sheltered their stolen fortunes in foreign tax havens.
{extended} ]]>If a decade's worth of these obscene Wall Street bonuses were confiscated, we could easily pay off our entire national debt tomorrow.
The company is still scheduled to pay out tens of millions of dollars more in March, mostly to former employees who did not agree to the concessions.
{extended} ]]>Government and AIG officials have been eager to avoid a repeat of the public furor that erupted last March when an earlier round of payments -- worth $168 million -- went to the same set of employees.
Anecdote is not science, though. And, more subtly, even if anecdote is correct, it does not answer the question of whether power tends to corrupt, as Lord Acton’s dictum has it, or whether it merely attracts the corruptible. To investigate this question Joris Lammers at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, and Adam Galinsky at Northwestern University, in Illinois, have conducted a series of experiments which attempted to elicit states of powerfulness and powerlessness in the minds of volunteers. Having done so, as they report in Psychological Science, they tested those volunteers’ moral pliability. Lord Acton, they found, was right.
They argue, therefore, that people with power that they think is justified break rules not only because they can get away with it, but also because they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want. This sense of entitlement is crucial to understanding why people misbehave in high office. In its absence, abuses will be less likely. The word “privilege” translates as “private law”. If Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky are right, the sense which some powerful people seem to have that different rules apply to them is not just a convenient smoke screen. They genuinely believe it.
Read the full article from the Economist
Jonah Lehrer, editor at Wired, penned a follow-up to the Economist article that is also worth a read.
{extended} ]]>Of course, we live in an age when our most powerful people - they tend to also have lots of money - are also the most isolated. They live in gated communities with private drivers. They eat at different restaurants and stay at different resorts. They wear different clothes and skip the security lines at airports, before sitting at the front of the plane. We shouldn't be surprised that they're also assholes.
I have no doubt there are many good men and women working in the banking sector. But the system is so corroded with vice, with selfishness, and, most importantly, with contempt for the common good, it needs real reform. I like what Obama has proposed and what the chairman of the Bank of England is now endorsing. I think the bailouts were necessary, just as I think the stimulus was necessary. But passing the toughest financial regulation bill we can at this point seems to me to be an urgent priority. The diffuse anger out there is a function of this deep sense of injustice - and it's correct.
{extended} ]]>