Your bailout dollars at work...

[John Jurcevic]

In case you are wondering what corporate executives are doing with their taxpayer-financed bailout bonuses, check out the former executive vice president at Merrill Lynch, Peter Kraus, who made of like a bandit after taking a $25 mil bonus for 3 months of work. So what can do you with all that money after fleecing US taxpayers? How about buying a $37 mil NYC apartment.

I am sure all the AllianceBernstein employees being laid off will take comfort in the fact that their new CEO can afford a place to live.

Welcome to fascism. Government by the corporate elite, for the corporate elite.

Are you outraged yet?

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

Which is why one must become the corporate elite not to get the short end of the stick.

 

[doug reich]

Which is why one must become the corporate elite not to get the short end of the stick.

Great reasoning.

Nice avatar.

 

[doug reich]

There is actually precedent for dying firms to offer huge bonuses to their employees. I just got done reading about Drexel Burnham in Den of Thieves; after settling felony charges with the government in 1989, the CEO guaranteed all bonuses would be at least 75% of the prior year, including one partner marking $100m, this to keep employees from defecting. They went bankrupt in February 1990, shortly after paying the bonuses (and $500m of their settlement).

Similar to Lehman, they couldn't get anyone to bail them out, although for different reasons. (Everyone hated Drexel's guts.)

 

[mwes]

Which is why one must become the corporate elite not to get the short end of the stick.

This is either an off-hand amusing remark or an example of moral decay.

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

Not sure about moral degradation, but face it: either you're the master of your own life, or you're running a rat race being someone else's wage slave and voting for politicians of various degrees of corruption in the hope that they'll be able to make your life better than the guy before them did.

When you're set for life, I'm thinking that you don't worry about a lot of the things most people do. And it's that low-stress if not stress-free life I seek.