Josh Marshall, The Point. The Point, Mr. Josh Marshall. I don’t believe you two have met:
I had heard this AIG bonus bill described as being more or less narrowly tailored to claw back AIG’s bonuses. That in fact was why some people were saying it might amount to some sort of unconstitutional action since it focused on a narrow class of individuals. But that’s not what this is about at all. Unless I’m misunderstanding this, it applies to the entirety of the concentrated financial sector – all TARP recipients talking over $5 billion. [...]
But it’s not clear to me why a couple, both of whom work in the financial services industry [for a company which the taxpayers are bailing out -ed.], and make $150,000 each should essentially have their entire bonuses taken back in taxes.
Are you on acid?
Because they didn’t earn it, maybe? Because if they were working for any other industry where they’d fucked the collective dog to the extent the financial services industry has, they wouldn’t even have a job? Because while 40-odd million Americans have no health care, these folks get $300,000/year plus bennies plus a bonus? Because fuck them?
March 19, 2009 at 11:19 pm
When it feels this right, how can I love anyone else?
March 19, 2009 at 11:20 pm
John seems to have missed the more general point: the culture of corruption on Wall Street.
More here ->
Naked Short Sales Hint Fraud in Bringing Down Lehman (Update1)
By Gary Matsumoto
March 19 (Bloomberg) — The biggest bankruptcy in history might have been avoided if Wall Street had been prevented from practicing one of its darkest arts.
As Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. struggled to survive last year, as many as 32.8 million shares in the company were sold and not delivered to buyers on time as of Sept. 11, according to data compiled by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bloomberg. That was a more than 57-fold increase over the prior year’s peak of 567,518 failed trades on July 30.
The SEC has linked such so-called fails-to-deliver to naked short selling, a strategy that can be used to manipulate markets. A fail-to-deliver is a trade that doesn’t settle within three days.
“We had another word for this in Brooklyn,” said Harvey Pitt, a former SEC chairman. “The word was ‘fraud.’”
March 19, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Aargh! I meant “Josh”
March 20, 2009 at 12:29 am
“We had another word for this in Brooklyn,” said Harvey Pitt, a former SEC chairman. “The word was ‘fraud.’”
Yeah, we had a different word for it in Jersey. Well, two words. The words were “our thing”.
March 20, 2009 at 5:21 am
When I was at Allstate, they didn’t call me “Liddy the Allstate guy.” And when I was CFO of G. D. Searle & Co., they didn’t call me “Liddy the Searleanator.” But you fuck just one collective dog. . . .
March 20, 2009 at 5:27 am
I really don’t think young Mr. Marshall’s perspective on the world has been improved by moving to Manhattan.
March 20, 2009 at 5:51 am
A number of commentators, both left and right, seem to be of the mistaken opinion that retroactive tax increases are in some way a violation of the constitution, among other things. Not so, a fact which I ferreted out back in January after the Merrill Lynch bonus outrage. Retroactive tax increases have a storied history going back almost 100 years and have been repeatedly upheld by the courts as constitutional.
I went and looked it up to make sure that this idea was legal before I wrote to Barney Frank and others suggesting it back in January.
As for it being unfair, given that we the taxpayers for all practical purposes now own AIG, it’s entirely within the purview of our representatives to determine the pay rate of people who are now our employees, since they wouldn’t have jobs if not for our money that’s keeping them in business. As for all the dark talk of setting a “bad precedent” with this legislation, it’s hard to imagine a worse precedent than the one that’s already been set: gamble with the world economy, drive it into a ditch, and we’ll bail you out, no strings attached. Had we set the type of “bad precedent” we’re now setting with the tax clawback way back during the S&L bailout, or during the Enron and WorldCom fiascos, we might not have ever reached this point.
March 20, 2009 at 6:07 am
Yeah, for as good as Marshall has been for so long, he was bound to fuck something up. I guess this is it.
TPMCafé is prtty fun to troll though.
March 20, 2009 at 6:25 am
Josh was for the Iraq Clysterfuqq before he was against it. So I guess that means he can at least learn. Just sayin’.
March 20, 2009 at 6:28 am
I believe it’s time for a return of the bed-shitting metaphor.
March 20, 2009 at 7:03 am
Jayzus, did anyone see Nate Silver’s last post at fivethiryeight? Every fucking bit as clueless. I swear to God, he asked if it was fair to tax away a bonus from a senior engineer that shepards a new kind of hybrid into development, just because he makes over $250K. Not that such an engineer exists, mind you, but theoretically, wouldn’t that be terribly unfair? Oh, the horrific economic damage that would result from limiting bonuses to the lower 98% income brackets!
These people really don’t live in the real world, do they? We read their websites, and we imagine we’re all web buds, but fuck, they aren’t even in the same time zone as reality.
March 20, 2009 at 8:13 am
did anyone see Nate Silver’s last post at fivethiryeight? Every fucking bit as clueless.
Nate Silver is a fine number-cruncher but he doesn’t know from people. He keeps writing posts about politicians’ strategies that assume ridiculous shit like that Republicans will a) think before they act and b) behave rationally.
March 20, 2009 at 8:56 am
Editors, I love you. I will take up knitting if we can restart a US version of the French revolution.
March 20, 2009 at 9:58 am
You all are not showing enough deference to your financial superiors. Eyes on the floor! Shuffle those feet! Open up that Treasury!
Now, say thank you. Say it!
March 20, 2009 at 10:09 am
We don’t own common stock in AIG, so we don’t get a vote. Maybe that needs to change.
We are being terribly unfair to the hypothetical people the Conservatives serve, again. We are so typically precise, dynamic, and hard on our selves to improve our government.
March 20, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Yeah, for as good as Marshall has been for so long, he was bound to fuck something up.
He’s usually very smart, so I keep looking for some angle where all this angst makes sense, and there just isn’t one. In a sense, sure, it’s not fair. It sucks that hard-working people suffer for the mistakes of upper management. But that’s life. It sucks that some people are going to get less money than they thought they were going to get. That, also, is life. All these problems are problems that everyone who gets laid off from their jobs is facing, except these people a) aren’t losing their jobs, and b) make ungodly salaries.
And $300,000/year is a shitload of money, wherever you live. It’s not as much as $10 million, or $800,000, or, indeed, any of the infinitude of numbers that are bigger than $300,000. But the only hope most of us ever have of earning $300,000/year is hyperinflation. I live in Silicon Valley, which is not exactly a bargain hunter’s paradise, my wife and I both have graduate degrees and full-time jobs, and we are never, ever, ever going to make $300,000/year unless one of us is accidentally drafted into the NBA. It’s a shitload of money, and I don’t know if you’ve looked out the window recently, but things are kind of tough all over. A $500,000 income is not anyone’s birthright, even nice people who you know socially and are very nice. Stop fucking whining.
March 20, 2009 at 1:21 pm
If said engineer received a bonus for a DEFECTIVE FUCKING DUMBASS IDEA that was nonetheless developed anyway, yes he should lose his bonus. Duh. Only performances that you know, COUNT should count. I know this isn’t perfectly fair; but hey, Terrell Owens and Randy Moss still get paid megabucks even if they drop most of their passes. They still catch quite a few, though, and moreover, gain considerably more yardage afterward with some of them. And few people on earth can do all that as well as they. Having said that, if they fuck up too much, they are gone. But CFOs do not routinely demonstrate any of their kind of talent on a daily basis, and they are all still on the playing field, so WTF?
March 20, 2009 at 1:26 pm
oh, and Mr the Editors, you left out ‘already’, as in: ‘stop fucking whining, already’.
No bonus for you today!
March 20, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Financiers are exempt from belt-tightening. They wear suspenders!
March 20, 2009 at 2:51 pm
The MLB Players Association is watching all this closely. They would add clauses to contracts as follows: “If Player X has more than 500 plate appearances, Players X will receive a $100,000 bonus. If Player X has less than 500 plate appearances, Player X will receive a $200,000 bonus and a new car.”
March 20, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Two words: Operation mayhem.
March 20, 2009 at 3:42 pm
AMEN.
March 20, 2009 at 4:06 pm
You know, no one is talking about the fact that the median income in this country has decreased this decade and has been pretty much stagnant since before Reagan. All the while there have become so many billionaires that millionaires ain’t shit anymore. This alone should justify tarring and feathering Larry Kudlow. And, as far as I know, he wasn’t actually involved in any credit default swaps.
March 21, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Damn straight, fuck them. And lest anyone’s heartstrings still feel a remaining twinge of tiny violin music for the euphemistically named “financial services industry”, it bears repeating that their response to every attempt to reign in even the most blatantly acknowledged criminality in their midst (what Jimmy Cramer winkingly calls “shenanigans”) has been a hearty, “Fuck you!” to all of us, in the form of shrieking and hair rending about teh horrors of Big Government Intervention.
Honest, well-meaning financial services industry employees? I say they’re mythical as unicorns; introduce me to just one.
March 21, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Here’s a shock: the non-rich get screwed and the rich don’t. I’m reeling.
I’d like to see some stories about people who, such as Mr. Nearing, work for a company (an early victim of the credit squeeze) that entered bankruptcy twice within 12 months and then went into liquidation.
This is what the bankruptcy court determined: The liquidators would pay Mr. N. and coworkers 80% of their usual salaries; there would be no more sales commissions. If Mr. N. and coworkers bitched and left, they would not receive unemployment compensation. All accrued vacation, holiday, personal, and sick pay was wiped out. Since the company went bankrupt, COBRA does not apply. No health care for you!
How sorry do I feel about the approx 75 AIG workers? Not much. How sorry do I feel about Mr. N. and his 1500 coworkers? Actually, I’m pretty much inconsolable.
March 21, 2009 at 7:51 pm
It’s real simple: they took the bailout lolly so they can STFU about getting their obscene fail-bonuses clawed back via taxes – or give back every penny of the bailout lolly, with interest. The rate is in line with what they’d've had to pony up under that radical socialist Eisenhower.
Won’t surprise me one bit if some of these cretins immediately try to sue for their tax money back if the day ever comes where the companies DO pay back the bailout – once an asshat, always an asshat.
Anyone who’s “thinking” of throwing a pity paty for these venal vipers needs their cranio-rectal interface interrupted before we’re all reduced to hunting stray dogs & eating dandelion salad.
March 21, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Hey, dandelion salad ain’t bad. Stray dog and poke salad, now there’s a desperate meal. But fortunately lentils are in no short supply.
March 22, 2009 at 12:07 am
Well, because I honor a contract. Even if it be minimum wage. (So hard to type that: ‘minimum wage’) I dunno, Bwaany Fwaaank. You misbred amalgamation, what do you thwynk? Brwing the west of the economyee dowyon, owyr gwyo and fwonynicate fwyow a bwyettah fwyutah wyhith Taxachuwyattes? Aywe sawye NOWE!
March 22, 2009 at 12:16 am
I also like penis in my mouth and will and have voted for Barney, he represents all I care about as do you the useful idiots who voted for him. I mean this personally…. I LOVE COCK IN MY MOUTH, unless it is retarded; ALL retarded cock should be aborted, unless I have it in my mouth, then It should be discarded after I shoot my load aand gain life giving something. Anyhow, kill it as witness to my debauchery, not that I should gain life fr its progenyu
March 22, 2009 at 12:32 am
Why do you let these idiots speak? Write? Eugenigics! One word. Shouldn’t they think like WE do?
March 22, 2009 at 12:42 am
Still don’t care. Something, and anyhow. Something abaout curr3nt ev3nts?
March 22, 2009 at 8:17 am
I’m not kidding when I say TPMCafé is fun to troll.
Ever since Marshall and Golin moved over to the new comment software that allows people to “favorite” each other (IIRC sometime after the DNC), TPMCafé has become a cesspool of obnoxious and preening personalities, whoring each other for “followers” (yes, that’s the term used).
It’s like a fucking politics MMORPG over there. Barney Frank is D20 degrees of gay; Dodd has lost his Boots of Populist Anger; Poopsock.
I’ve been reading TPM since Marshall was screaming about the US Attorney firings and no one was listening, and he’s always been a good read, but ever since the DNC the commenters there personify what sucks about blogs; people trying their damn’edest to get link’ed to and track’ed-back’ed while putting forth the most bland and trite posts ever.
March 22, 2009 at 10:11 am
I saw Juan Cole on Colbert this week, I’m pretty sure that’s Steve Forbes in a Andy Kaufman wig, but whatever. Latka made a lot of sense.
March 23, 2009 at 5:29 pm
If anything thanks for the DasFX vid. Love that song.
March 24, 2009 at 2:02 pm
I swear to God, he asked if it was fair to tax away a bonus from a senior engineer that shepards a new kind of hybrid into development, just because he makes over $250K.
Is it a new hybrid Pinto that blows up other people’s cars all over the world? Otherwise I’m not getting the analogy.