You have to read Nocera’s column. It will make you furious, but you have to read it.
As Nocera points out this consolidation isn’t a universally bad thing, but as he says, it’s hard not to feel that we’ve been had.
As an aside, this is a case in point for all those who have been somewhat gleeful about the collapse of American journalism as a business. Could you imagine what would be going on if no one like Joe Nocera were keeping an eye on the way our tax dollars are being dealt out?
That said we can all hope that Sen. Christopher Dodd is right and that as more and more Americans begin to understand where their money is going we will have a revolt and the money — our money — will be used for its intended purpose.
But One Hundred Fifty Thousand Dollars?!! On clothes? (OK and hair and make up.) It’s almost as hard for me to get my head around as the notion that it’s a bad thing to have the super-rich pay slightly higher taxes so those in need need a little less.
I’m admittedly a newcomer to the wonders of Silicon Valley’s fall foliage.
Having grown up in the Midwest, where there is a real change of seasons, it took me some time to figure out that the seasons change here, too. The thought struck me again over the weekend as I raked up the first few leaves to fall from our liquidambar. It won’t be long before the tree will be ablaze.
San Jose Heritage Tree
We’re lucky here. We can enjoy autumn’s color show from now into December. My leaf-raking epiphany reminded me of a story my former colleague Pat Harris, now at San Jose State, told me about a business school project there that grew into something more.
Morgenson, the Times’ Wall Street columnist and former stock broker, had a glimpse of Paulson’s, er um, cluelessness months ago when he visited with the paper’s reporters and editors to try and sell bailout plan 1.0. (For a trip down bailout memory lane see Kevin Phillips piece on the Huffington Post.)
Morgenson told a lunchtime crowd at Santa Clara University yesterday that she was surprised by Paulson’s presentation at the time.
“He was very inarticulate,” she said. She said she figured a guy who had worked on Wall Street would at least know what he was talking about. Maybe, she speculated, he wasn’t used to dealing with the media. Maybe he was a little bit afraid.
“The New York Times is very ferocious,” she said. “We were all sitting there with our eyebrows knit.”
Or maybe he knew, to use the technical economic term, he had bupkes.
Yes, yes, it’s disturbing enough to see how the McCain campaign’s strategy of playing to some voters’ fear of “the other” is unfolding.
The befuddled woman in Minnesota will forever be the poster child for the racist voter who simply will never pull the level for “that one.” He’s an Arab, she said at a recent McCain rally.
No doubt she meant to say Obama is a Muslim, which he isn’t. She may think Arab and Muslim are the same thing or that all Arabs are Muslims or all Muslims are Arabs. Who knows?
Let’s see… Plan B. Plan C. Anybody got a Plan D?
The feds have proped up Fannie and Freddie and AIG. They’ve arranged marriages between big banks and other big banks. They’ve promised to pump $700 billion into our wheezing economic engine. And what happens? The Dow tanks. Again.
Henry Paulson could just strangle someone
The Dow and the S&P 500 both had one of their worst days since World War II on Thursday, the New York Times cheerily reports. Uh, who would have thought that Wednesday was a good day, the Dow dropping only 189 points?
Add it up and the Dow is down 1,746 points for the week, give or take. But of course, the experts tell us, it’s not the points that are important but the percentages. And if you look at the percentages, well, never mind.
“Americans should be confident that every effort is being taken to stabilize our markets,” President Bush’s spokeswoman said, according to the Times.
And that was terribly reassuring, except she apparently also announced that Bush would take to the airwaves at 7 a.m. Pacific to reassure us on matters of the economy. Couldn’t he please just sleep in?
Nothing personal, but the market took it’s big dive Wednesday about the time Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was telling us not to worry, or OK worry a little bit.
And Thursday’s plunge, the Times reports, “came after the Treasury Department signaled that it would move quickly to inject money directly into big financial firms in addition to buying up to $700 billion in troubled loans and securities from the companies.”
Maybe it would be better if these guys who many see as playing a major role in getting us into this fix just keep their mouths shut for now.
Think about it: These guys were under a lot of stress. They were out selling for a team that had just destroyed the world’s largest insurer. Sheesh. Of course they needed a little pampering. And why not 400K? Once taxpayers kicked in the $85 billion AIG brass had plenty of money to reward its sales force.
But she said today she’d like to take the columnist’s prerogative and offer her thoughts on executive pay. Let’s all hope she spouts off more often. Kristof is spot on on her take on executive pay in America.
Hers is not an anti-rich-people rant. She lays out why compensation packages that run hundreds of times the earnings of working stiffs are bad for America. I’d don’t want to sound like Joe Biden, but reading Kristof’s column it occurred to me that CEOs who raid the corporate treasury to finance their own cushy lifestyles are arguably unpatriotic.
Wall Street has been saved — and Main Street with it — now that the Senate, House and George W. Bush have all approved the $700 billion bailout that had hit a few bumps in the road earlier this week.
One reason that the bill that was so unpopular Monday passed Friday was that it was loaded up with tax breaks. All of which strikes me as odd. Faced with a bill that is unpopular because it puts too much of taxpayers’ money at risk you add another $150 billion in costs to it to make it more palatable?
A lot of weird stuff comes across my desk (ok, pours into my e-mail box) and I’d be selfish not to share.
The latest? Take-out tips from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yes, the people who brought you Col. Sanders, high cholesterol and Friday night dinner on the cheap are horning in on Martha Stewart’s turf.
The pitch, a shameless attempt to drum up interest in drumsticks (KFC’s Value Meal to be precise), hits the Silicon Valley sweet spot. Yes, we’re too busy to eat! Or too busy to cook anyway!
Specifically, it seemed to strike a chord with those who would like to strike me. My thought was fairly modest: I thought it would be good to try to get at the emotional turmoil the proposal to send buckets of tax money to the rescue of Wall Street wheeler-dealers was causing many of us here on Main Street (where politicians seem pretty sure is where we all live.)
I wrote about anger, about how people who have been making their rent and mortgage payments and trying to save for their kids’ college and their own retirement were furious. I thought it was worthwhile to address the anger out there — particularly when it became fairly clear that constituents’ anger played a role in torpedoing the $700 billion bailout bill on Monday.
