Bye Bye Banks and Wall Street

[Alex]

I'd have a comment on that $11 million statement but that really could get me in trouble (but part of my response: when the money was offered to him, they didn't know it would only be 10 days).

As for taking the golden parachutes, that isn't as much money as you may think. Using 2005 numbers, if you took 100% of the annual pay of each of the top five executives at every Fortune 500 company, you'd have collected $14 billion (and realistically you'd only get a small fraction of that). Yes, a lot of money at the individual level but collectively just a large drop in the bucket.

I'm not defending executive compensation, it is definitely way out of proportion. But while any attempt to cap or regulate may appeal to a sense of fairness or punishment it doesn't really impact the financials.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I don't particularly care what the cost is. If the cost is high, the cost is high. I'm more concerned that it be spent intelligently, and not just funneled right back to the people who mishandled it thus far, reinforcing the belief (no longer belief but proven fact) that the federal government will prop them up if they get unlucky.

[scaeagles]

Why I can't stand Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

I realize politics will be played, but something tells me Pelosi isn't going to be talking about this while blaming republicans.

Five years ago, Barney Frank vouched for the "soundness" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and said "I do not see" any "possibility of serious financial losses to the treasury."

Earlier this year, Senator Christopher Dodd praised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for "riding to the rescue" when other financial institutions were cutting back on mortgage loans. He too said that they "need to do more"
to help subprime borrowers get better loans.

In other words, Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.

And Frank and Dodd are are leading the effort to fix this? Puke.

[innerSpaceman]

Don't get me wrong ... I think politicians, the fed, treasury and the streeters saw this coming five, ten, even 20 years ago. But a comment made five years ago about the soundness of the lax and deregulatory financial environment is quite different than one made earlier this year.


If John McCain hadn't said the economy is basically sound just a few weeks ago ....

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Don't get me wrong ... I think politicians, the fed, treasury and the streeters saw this coming five, ten, even 20 years ago. But a comment made five years ago about the soundness of the lax and deregulatory financial environment is quite different than one made earlier this year.

So you then think Dodd is an idiot for what he said earlier this year?

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by PanTheMan

Well... Bush needed the icing on his cluterf*ck of a presidency.

I by no means am defending Bush, but what culpability does the Democratically-controlled Congress hold in this?

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

The government should take money from the golden parachutes of the CEOs and Presidents of the failed businesses to get their bailout money.

Something I was thinking about on the drive in this morning: can anything LEGALLY be done to limit the golden parachute payouts? Are these considered employment contracts? If so, CAn they be restricted?

I am NOT saying that I want these people to get the money regardless, just a legal ramification I was wondering about.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Kevy Baby

Something I was thinking about on the drive in this morning: can anything LEGALLY be done to limit the golden parachute payouts? Are these considered employment contracts? If so, CAn they be restricted?

If congress passes a version of the bailout plan with restrictions, then yes. Basically it would be in the form of, "If your company accepts money from the bailout fund, you will agree to these restrictions on executive compensation."

The argument in favor of those restrictions is that the executives at the companies in most need of help do not deserve to cash out on whatever compensation contracts they have seeing as they failed to do what they were contracted to do. They shouldn't be allowed to accept a bailout and then profit from it.

The argument against it is that it'll defeat the purpose of the bailout. Institutions that aren't in dire shape won't want to agree to the restrictions so they won't take the money. That leaves only the ones that are in absolute dire straits who might be willing to take it. But then taking it would be a sure sign that they're in bad shape, so people are going to be reluctant to invest in them, bailout or no, so THEY'LL be reluctant to buy into the program also.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

If congress passes a version of the bailout plan with restrictions, then yes. Basically it would be in the form of, "If your company accepts money from the bailout fund, you will agree to these restrictions on executive compensation."

Thanks for the explanation. Although I wouldn't be surprised down the road if someone who ends up not getting their golden parachute sues to get it anyways.

[innerSpaceman]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

So you then think Dodd is an idiot for what he said earlier this year?

Yes, that was an idiotic remark.


The rest of them are just crooks. The whole lot of 'em.




Morrigoon ... the mortgage crisis is simply the back-breaking straw. I like your solution better than simply throwing money at buying the worthless debt. But the problem is far deeper than merely the latest symptom (mortgage-backed-securities). It's been headed this way for 30 years, and it's the entire concept of free-markets-uber-alis. Homeowner relief does nothing to address that.

It's not that I want no action taken, it's that I don't think our system is capable of taking any action that would make a difference. Look at the complete failure of Congress to agree on the band-aid. How in the world would they ever accomplish healing the disease???



We.Are.Fvcked.

[Morrigoon]

To that end, iSm, I agree with you. I think the bailout plan in its current form is pretty ill-conceived.

It seemed from your posts that you were against any sort of action, and that you wanted to let the chips fall where they may, which I'd ordinarily agree with, except that the current problem has grown to such a proportion that it quite seriously endangers the entire economy and not just the people directly involved. To that end, I'd rather see some people get some help they may not deserve, than see innocent parties get taken down in a bad economy they had nothing to do with creating.

But I also think that a solid part of this package would be trying to re-set people's loans back to what they were at before the FED started raising interest rates like mad. Heaven forbid the government admit it was overly aggressive about that and acknowledge their own part in the mess.

Not saying that ARMs don't have a right to adjust, of course they do, but if you wanna undo this mess with the government purchasing fewer troubled loans, that's one thing that would help. Yes there could be major repercussions from a massive interest rate re-set, but these are extenuating circumstances, and the alternative is to let the homes be foreclosed upon and have the government purchase them as per the bailout plan.