Obama spanks Wall Street.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by TGRR

No, the whole bailout sounds like "A big fucking gift to fat greedy bastards".

No actual work is required or even encouraged.

Well at least some of them got under the wire and got million dollar bonus checks or big assed parties paid for by the taxpayer. Good job Congress! Well done Pelosi and Reid! You guys rock!

Wait, I mean you guys Suck.

[tw]

Hearsay details say that only applies to the top five executives. Stock brokers - the employees - routinely get paid more than that in bonuses. The complaint is that WS employees cannot survive on their $200,000+ annual salary. That they might leave the company.

Well, the company should have thought about their problems years ago. But then where is that employee going to go if everyone else must start paying normally and cutting fees. Mutual funds that once charges 1% must now charge 0.1% (just like discount brokerages did to full service brokerages). Or the defective top management who created this problem should step aside so that the few who actually did something to earn a bonus can now run the company.

Well, none of this is going to happen. For all the show, those restrictions are easy to get around such as pay back any TARP moneys now. Better is to simply fire employees who are getting massive bonuses despite creating losses. What would be left are the few employees who are actually productive - who actually earned profits by doing simple things such as due diligence.

When it is all done, we should see many less finance executives, much lower salaries, discounted fees even in hedge funds and mutual funds, salaries in the replacement for the SEC doubled, every investment vehicle traded only on regulated markets, and a complete overhaul of accounting standards that are still as corrupt as when Enron and LTCM existed. Not. Fools will again complain about too much regulation – and buy their favorite congressmen to subvert the rules.

There is nothing on Wall Street that can be trusted without severe regulation both by government and organized open markets. It now appears the same things that created the mythical CA energy crisis are also responsible for $4 per gallon gasoline. Deregulated finance people.

These new rules do almost nothing to address the problem. Even the definition of luxery expenses has been left to the individual Board of Directors to define.

[tw]

Researchers provide a more optimistic attitude. From the NY Times of 4 Feb 2009:

A Pay Ceiling Could Blunt the Lure of a Wall Street Job
In their National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, Thomas Philippon of New York University and Ariell Reshef of the University of Virginia found that the difference in pay between finance and the rest of industry was slight, if any, except in the late 1920s to 1930 and then again from the mid-1990s to 2006. In those boom years, compensation in finance was 30 percent to 50 percent higher than in the rest of industry.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Well at least some of them got under the wire and got million dollar bonus checks or big assed parties paid for by the taxpayer. Good job Congress! Well done Pelosi and Reid! You guys rock!

Wait, I mean you guys Suck.

While the dems are wallowing in filth, there's plenty of filth left over for the GOP.

This isn't a "party" thing. It's a "complete failure of the American political system" thing.

[TheMercenary]

You know I would buy into that TGRR if the Demoncrats did not control Congress and the purse strings for the last 2 years.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

You know I would buy into that TGRR if the Demoncrats did not control Congress and the purse strings for the last 2 years.

Oh, yeah...and the 5 years before that was full of angelic choirs singing, and the apotheosis of clean government and fiscal responsibility.



And all of our current financial difficulties started in January of 2007, rather than starting in the Carter administration, and carried on since then by both parties in all 3 branches of government.

Silly me. I forgot that the GOP is where all the honest politicians go.

Har har!

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

You know I would buy into that TGRR if the Demoncrats did not control Congress and the purse strings for the last 2 years.

The Democrats really had very little control over the purse strings, with Bush vetoes (or threats of vetoes) of every appropriations bill....and no where near the 2/3 votes needed to override. Their options were to shut down the government and be blamed for not providing funds for troops on the front lines in Iraq/Afghanistan...holding up Social Security checks, etc. or find a way to at least make the Bush bills more palatable.

At best, you could make a weak case that there was shared responsibility for the last two years....following six years of the Republican Congress abrogating its oversight responsibilities and failing to "check" the excesses of the Bush administration and instead, gave Bush a "blank check."

Originally Posted by TGRR

And all of our current financial difficulties started in January of 2007, rather than starting in the Carter administration, and carried on since then by both parties in all 3 branches of government.

I personally think it started with Reagan supply side ("voodoo" - GHW Bush) economics and deregulation (remember the $billions S&L bail out) and exacerbated by Clinton and the Republican Congress and further banking deregulation in the late 90s when the budget was getting fat and the economy was on a roll.

And then six more years of supply side economics and deregulation with virtually no Congressional oversight....while at the same time, paying for a $hundreds of billions (off budget) for an unprovoked war.

What I find most fucked up of all is that at the base of the Republican alternative stimulus package is more failed supply side economics and the "free market will fix itself" (deregulation) proposals.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

The Democrats really had very little control over the purse strings, with Bush vetoes (or threats of vetoes) of every appropriations bill....and no where near the 2/3 votes needed to override. Their options were to shut down the government and be blamed for not providing funds for troops on the front lines in Iraq/Afghanistan...holding up Social Security checks, etc. or find a way to at least make the Bush bills more palatable.

At best, you could make a weak case that there was shared responsibility for the last two years....following six years of the Republican Congress abrogating its oversight responsibilities and failing to "check" the excesses of the Bush administration and instead, gave Bush a "blank check."

Sorry, the Demoncrats own it.

OK ..ignore the facts and the numbers of how Congress works

Its not worth discussing with you.

[TheMercenary]

Ok, but what ever. The Dems have been in charge of Congress for over two years now and have MUCH lower approval ratings when compared to Bush. So explain to me how they cannot accept responsibility for the last two years. They are the MaJORITY, and yet can't get a damm thing done. Don't blame the Republickins. The Dems own it. And you need to own up to it.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Ok, but what ever. The Dems have been in charge of Congress for over two years now and have MUCH lower approval ratings when compared to Bush. So explain to me how they cannot accept responsibility for the last two years. They are the MaJORITY, and yet can't get a damm thing done. Don't blame the Republickins. The Dems own it. And you need to own up to it.

Damm....you cant get things done if you cant override a veto..how hard is that to understand?????

No...in fact, the Democrats in Congress did not have a much lower approval rating than Bush.

Cngress as a whole had lower ratings and if you were to look below the surface, most of it was attributed to the record number of Republican Senate filibusters and the acrimony between the two parties.

Job Rating - Democrats

Job Rating - Republicans

Most every poll has the public wanting and trusting the Democrats far more to run Congress.
Trust/Confidence of Political parties

[TheMercenary]

Fail.

CONGRESS
2008 = 18%

BUSH
2008 = 29%

http://www.gallup.com/poll/107242/Co...p-Records.aspx

And it stayed that way for more than a year.

[TheMercenary]

Follow the thread. Congress<Bush.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Follow the thread. Congress<Bush.

You dont get it...comparing a body of 535 with one person, you need to look below the surface for the reasons for dissatisfaction with the 535.

It is attributed more to republican obstructionism and bi-partisan bickering. Thats a fact....thus the much lower poll numbers for the Republicans in Congress than the Democrats when asked the question of satisfaction, by party.

Hotline poll: D - 49, R-26
USA today/Gallup: D - 37, R-25
CNN: D-47, R-24
Harris: D-21, R-22
ABC: D-35, R-25

With the exception of Harris, the Democrats not only have higher numbers than the Republicans in Congrss...but higher number than Bush.

In your words..."you need to own up to it"


And now I am bored with you.