The point is that that state of affairs is unsustainable , even if morally you don't have a problem with it , you own the Chinese billions, even to buy TVs made with the cheep Chinese labor you have to borrow and borrow.

People would buy on credit whether or not the items were made by cheap labor or not. It has nothing to do with the cost. If someone wants something, they will buy it whether they can afford it or not. People buying things they can't afford is the problem, not the cost of the item.

Well golden parachutes are legal, extreme free enterprise in the financial investment banking industry is also legal, so now what about the politicians who put forth ideologist and massive deregulations? Free enterprise is the best system but not a perfection, markets need to be regulated. If CEOs deserve jail time then politicians do too.

For many years the West was able to go on the shopping spree, thanks to the very cheep labor in China . There is nothing intrinsically different about Americans, Australians ... that should give us much higher standard of living than that of the Chinese.

Certainly golden parachutes are legal, and companies are often contractually obligated to pay them, if money is left after they pay creditors, etc. However, if a comp committee had to vote to give the 3 departing execs $20M, that's a clue that they weren't necessarily contractually obligated to pay out that money. If the business is bankrupt, and you're begging the gov't for assistance to save it, it hardly seems the right thing to do. Frankly, it's a slap in the face to taxpayers who are struggling to make ends meet.

I read somewhere that the CEO of Washington Mutual, who had been on the job for a total of only 3 WEEKS, received a payoff of $17.5 million, PLUS his $8.5 million sign on bonus.

In all fairness, I think that was a part of his contract. I'm not excusing those types of compensation practices, but they are very common. It would've been a much more bitter pill had he been responsible for the company's troubles.

http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/20...1006150152.aspx

Can't help it, this makes me smile.

The poll result further down the page on this reporting of that particular incident made me laugh out loud.

http://consumerist.com/5060063/lehman-brot...hed-in-the-face

Economics aren't actually a 'zero sum game.' Twitchly, I'm sure you know there's no real reason why people in the developed world have to become poorer so that people in the so-called developing countries can become wealthier. I've often noticed that people from Canada seem to be more educated regarding economics. I guess your media is better in that dept.

Capitalism has been moving manufacture to sources of cheaper labour. Nobody made this happen, unfortunately the transfer of jobs by the millions has hurt people who are unskilled and semi-skilled labourers. We see the effects in inner cities as well as rural areas in the USA.

India has had an per annum rate of GDP for the last few years. China's has been 5%. The USA has been lucky to reach 1%.

Morticia, skilled labour is also affected and, in addition, loss of the technology and know-how to manufacture certain items. Given the speed at which technology changes these days, even if North America decided to reclaim its manufacturing capacity, it would not be easy to bring facilities and the workforce up to speed rapidly.

Not true, the US didn 't have to sign NAFTA or open its market to China! Unregulated capitalism has clearly not worked out good for america.

I'm beginning to think that the French peasants had the right idea!

From my american New York point of view, if the French are peasants they must be very refined ones.

Polk, they are referring to the French Revolution.

I think she means these French peasants.



Maybe we could organize a golf outing at an exclusive resort and set the guillotine up behind the fourteenth green.

Spending $700 billion to buy toxic paper did not release money into the banking channels. Do you think suddenly these guys are going to start conducting business for the common good? Hell, no! They are busy looting before the damn store burns down. The government should have called for a Wall Street holiday like FDR did with the banks. Closed the exchanges and separated the toxic from the solvent.
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That makes sense now but most aspects of the situations are not comparable; this is 2008, we are a democracy and we are supposed to be responsible citizens. Don 't we all deserve the deregulators we sent to Washington who betrayed the average american? I 'm glad people are waking up.

I just checked my IRA again. Lost 50%. A co-worker lost 60%. I'd suggest you DON'T look at your cuz it's only gonna be bad news! Nothing you can do about the stock market dropping below 9000 for the first time in years. Where is the frickin' bottom?

I don't agree with a certain parties wanting to "buy up all of the outstanding mortgages to get the economy back on it's feet" either! What about us Americans that have always paid our mortgages? Is there any end to this idiocracy? Now AIG is being given more billions as well.

I fully recognize how privileged I am, it 's not a big deal but I 've just bought a $120.00 vintage edt Givenchy III this evening on ebay. I feel bad for those who thought they could buy a home just like that even without a job because it 's everybody 's dream. CEOs whose greed outpaced their brains and created the current debacle get away with golden parachutes and massive bonuses but 50 millions don 't have health insurance?

There is plenty of blame to go around, what about those in Congress that didn't let banking regulations bill to pass ?

Well, I'm doing my bit for the economy by buying lots of perfume and by "injecting" a ton of nice collectibles into the Salvation Army Thrift stores, which they can sell in the upcoming gift season and then put the money to their social programs. If governments can inject, why not I?

1. The BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones interviews Mark Gertler:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programm...interview.shtml

The link will take you to the BBC; click on the 'Listen' to play the program.

2. AIG received $85 billion dollars in the bailout. They got caught trying to give away $19 million dollars to their ex-CEO.

3. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she will propose a bill requiring that financial institutions participating in the Treasury's $700 billion rescue plan be banned from lobbying with that money.

Now can we get the tumbrel cart and the guillotine?
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Now, that the AIG and the banks are owned by the government, big payouts will not be possible.


Be careful, for what you wish for, the same terror, that the French revolutionaries started, eventually sent themselves to the guillotine, - "Revolution devours its own children," - if you studied French revolution, you'll know what that means.

Do you really think we should let them even get to the 14th Green? I say NO, HELL NO!

What is sad is that it will take yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrssss for this to all be resolved. I feel terrible for the children that will inherit it. I don't know what else they could take from me, except for my social security. I am learning to live on less, but what the children of today have inherited is terribly sad when you think about it. If I were them, I would be very angry.

You're right. Don't look at it, it will only depress you. I've stopped.

I plan to be a greeter at Sam's Club .. that's my new retirement strategy. I will learn to enjoy cat food ...

The moderators will probably move this to the "Talk About Food" forum but maybe someone has a poor man's pâté and Ritz cracker recipe she or he would like to share.



Ruh roh. My bad. According to this morning's paper it was a $600 million compensation and bonus pool including $19 million to chief executive Martin Sullivan, $93 million to five other top executives and $69 million to Joseph Casano, former head of AIG's Financial Products subsidiary - the inventors of 'Wiz Bucks' (see my post in this thread regarding credit defaults which are negotiable instruments that should have been tightly regulated or restricted solely to investment banks as risky loans and mortgages were 'insured' as long as everything kept humming along).



Why not? AIG 'voluntarily froze' these payouts after New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo pointed that out. And Cuomo promised to recoup other recent payouts. I just want to emphasize that this is the the New York attorney general - not the feds.

Sweden and Germany are enacting emergency legislation to prevent the same type of executive payouts since their government bailouts.

Voluntarily froze. What a sense of humor.

Two words: perp walk. Pretty soon we'll be posting bail for those guys.
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AND THE BEAT GOES ON..............

Saw this joke posted elsewhere about the financial crisis:


Once upon a time, in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for £10 each.

The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them.

The man bought thousands at £10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort.

He further announced that he would now buy at £20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.

The offer increased to £25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at £50!

However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers,

"Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected.

I will sell them to you at £35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each."

The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man nor his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere!

Stinkin' exchange rate.

Oh for pity's sake. I get it, I get it even if currently £35 would be $52.6443.
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As I was trying to say before Veronica, Jr and Rosemary so rudely walked across the keyboard:

Was this the Enron Monkey Co.?
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