Left of the Dial

Yes, Sir, May I Have Another?

It's not even a con. They come right out and tell us what they're doing to us and smile and wonder what we're going to do about it. Oh, that's right: nothing. 

Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year—a record high that shows compensation is rebounding despite regulatory scrutiny of Wall Street’s pay culture.

Workers at 23 top investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers and stock and commodities exchanges can expect to earn even more than they did the peak year of 2007, according to an analysis of securities filings for the first half of 2009 and revenue estimates through year-end by The Wall Street Journal.

Total compensation and benefits at the publicly traded firms analyzed by the Journal are on track to increase 20% from last year’s $117 billion—and to top 2007’s $130 billion payout. This year, employees at the companies will earn an estimated $143,400 on average, up almost $2,000 from 2007 levels.

Teabaggage

I've been simultaneously amused and outraged by the whole teabagging thing. On the one hand, the fact that they've glommed onto a fair filthy sexual term for it is so delightful and appropriate. On the other hand, the fact that...

...well, I'm just going to excerpt liberally from a far better writer for that part; this guy writes the way I tend to speak, so those who are offended by colorful language'll want to skip this one:

Anyway this teabag thing has really gotten out of control. It’s amazing, literally amazing to me, that it wasn’t until Obama pushed through a package containing a massive public works package and significant homeowner aid that conservatives took to the streets. In other words, it wasn’t until taxes turned into construction jobs and mortgage relief that working and middle-class Americans decided to protest. I didn’t see anyone on the street when we forked over billions of dollars to help JP Morgan Chase buy Bear Stearns. And I didn’t see anyone on the street when Hank Paulson forked over $45 more billion to help Bank of America buy Merrill Lynch, a company run at the time by one of the world’s biggest assholes, John Thain. Moreover I didn’t see any street protests when the government agreed to soak up hundreds of billions in “troubled assets” from Citigroup, a company that just months later would lend out a jet furnished with pillows upholstered with Hermes scarves to former chief Sandy Weill so that he could vacation in Mexico over Christmas.

Look, I’m a taxpayer too. And I’m no less pissed off than any of these people about the taxes I have to pay. Just today I was reading hedge-fund manager David Einhorn’s book, Fooling Some of the People All of the Time, about his battles with a company called Allied Capital. Einhorn was shorting Allied because he found accounting irregularities in Allied’s books after analyzing the firm. Among other things, he found that an Allied subsidiary called BLX was irresponsibly handling tens of millions in Small Business Association loans, shoving this SBA money out to unworthy recipients and costing the taxpayer an enormous amount of money. When Einhorn went to the SBA, they basically blew him off. “We see this all the time; what’s so special about those?” was the SBA official’s response when Einhorn presented him with evidence of loan fraud. Einhorn pointed out that one of the reasons companies like BLX got away with bilking the government was because the enforcement agencies were so understaffed: he routinely found that agencies like the SEC and the OIG could not or would not investigate fraud against the taxpayer because they had no staff to pursue the investigations.

That attitude, that complete and total I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude about taxpayer money, that’s endemic to almost every branch of the government. We saw in the last five years how contractors in Iraq nakedly robbed money from the you and me, running phantom convoys across the desert (some companies called that transporting “sailboat fuel”), systematically risking human life and gouging the taxpayer more or less right out in the open. There was over $100 billion in sole-source, non-competitive contracts in Iraq in 2006; a House Committee identified just 50 contracts totalling more than $21 billion that require “scrutiny,” but not much has been recovered so far. Why did they get away with it? Because there is basically no serious enforcement mechanism, in the military or anywhere else, for preserving taxpayer money given to contractors. In Iraq, the military auditor, SIGIR, had about seventy men in the entire military theater at the time I was there. We just bailed out AIG to the tune of more than $160 billion; its primary auditor, the Office of Thrift Supervision, had exactly one insurance expert on its staff while AIG was falling apart. There were staff cuts at the SEC several times in the last ten years; in fact there was a crucial cut of the SEC budget in an $821 billion Omnibus spending bill at the tail end of 2003 (just in time for the housing bubble) that was packed with plenty of pork and, again, inspired no protests from Joe Sixpack.

Meanwhile the federal government has systematically expanded a whole ecosystem of contractor-handout programs, most of them with names the public has never heard of. How many people out there are aware of all the millions in grants given to fortune 500 companies over the years through the Advanced Technology Program (ATP), which basically subsidizes the R&D departments of already rich firms while allowing those same companies to keep the benefits of those innovations? How about the nearly $5 billion in loan guarantees given to Boeing over the years through the Ex-Im Bank? How about the Foreign Military Financing Program, which gives millions of dollars to dozens of foreign countries every year so that they can buy American-made weapons?

Or how about the four or five billion dollars we spent annually for the last decade or so on Federal Housing Authority subsidies? Well, actually, the teabaggers probably would get riled up about those programs, which subsidize mortgage loans to low-income homeowners. The one constant in teabagger outrage is that the whatever wasteful government program they’re freaking out about has to benefit some poor slob, or else they usually don’t give a shit. What they forget, of course, is that FHA loans ultimately benefit the banks a lot more than the poor slobs — a homeowner defaulting on his FHA loan loses his house, but the bank that irresponsibly issued the loan (without fear, knowing they are backed up by the government) is still fully compensated, with you picking up the tab.

So yeah, government waste sucks, it’s rampant at every level, and taxes are a vicious racket, and everyone should be pissed off . What’s hilarious about the teabaggers, though, is how they never squawk about waste until the spending actually has a chance of benefiting them. You will never hear of a teabagger crying about OPIC giving $50 million in free insurance to some mining company so that they can dig for silver in rural Bolivia. You won’t hear of a teabagger protesting the $2.5 billion in Ex-Im loans we gave to GE through the early part of this decade, even as GE was moving nearly a hundred thousand jobs overseas over the course of ten years. And Michelle Malkin’s readers didn’t seem to mind giving IBM millions in Ex-IM and ATP loans at the same time it was giving its former CEO, Lou Gerstner, $260 million in stock options.

In other words teabaggers don’t mind paying taxes to fund the salaries of Bolivian miners, Lou Gerstner’s stock options, deliveries of “sailboat fuel,” the Hermes scarves on Sandy Weill’s jet pillows, or even the export of their own goddamn jobs. But they do hate it when someone tries to re-asphalt their roads, or help bail their slob neighbor out of foreclosure. And God forbid someone propose a health care program, or increased financial aid for college. Hell, that’s like offering to share your turkey with the other Pilgrims! That’s not what America is all about! America is every Pilgrim for himself, dammit! Raise your own motherfucking turkey!

Oh, and there’s one other thing. I heard today from Steve Wamhoff of Citizens for Tax Justice. He had an interesting tidbit to offer on the teabagging movement. According to his research, 39% of respondents with incomes below $30,000 told the Gallup agency that they felt that federal income tax levels were “too high.” Which is interesting, because only 32% of respondents in that income category will pay any federal income taxes at all on their 2008 income. You can draw your own conclusions.

Bleed the World

Now THIS is brilliant. 

One Home Many Hopes

So Left o' the Dialian DT has a lil' brother who helped found the following project. 

After hearing about it, I asked if I could post the info here, since studies have shown the average LotDian has a heart more than three times the average size. And because all they're looking for is ten bucks--that's about two trips to Starbucks, or one fairly cheap happy hour. And you get a better return than the market, at least, so far this century. Top Management and I have already chipped in. So check it out, yo: 

This is a campaign called “One Home Many Hopes,” organized to ask people to consider donating $10 in an effort to raise $20,000 in 30 days.

”One Home Many Hopes” is a charity Jon Tapper, who owns a Public Relations firm in Boston called Melwood Global, helped put together last year after a good friend of his was moved to action by the poverty he saw in Mtwapa, Kenya.

In short, there is an orphanage, Mudzini Kwetu, which takes care of 35 girls, all of whom were rescued from the Mtwapa streets, where they searched through trash piles for food. Mudzini Kwetu not only gives these girls a home they didn't previously have, it has also given them a childhood.

So the gist is that we're trying to raise a lot of money - $20,000 - in tiny donations by November 23. People can become a part of it by visiting http://www.raceto20k.org/ to make a donation; as well as telling friends, families and colleagues about the effort.

They can also visit http://www.onehomemanyhopes.org/index.html to hear and learn more about this amazing organization.

There is absolutely no overhead for this charity -- every last penny you give you will go directly to the girls.

Thanks to everyone who considers participating.

Big Numbers

Gives a bit of perspective: 

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers." 

—Richard Feynman, physicist, Nobel laureate (1918-1988)

Money for Nothing

So you’ve probably heard about the way Democrats and Republicans are coming together in a heart-rending show of unity, joining hands and singing “Kumbaya” as they put aside their differences and patriotically hand over, no strings attached, $800,000,000,000—or about $2500 on behalf of every single man, woman and child in these here United States of America—to the exact same people who got us in this financial disaster. 

Hold on…what? 

No strings attached? Seriously? 

Yeah. Seriously. 

Check it out. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson says things are so critical that we must act immediately, without delay, this very second. He simply must be handed close to A TRILLION DOLLARS. 

But one of the conditions of him accepting this money—I have a hard time believing this is true, even as I type it, and yet it is—is a clause which specifically says he can do whatever he wants with the money and there will be absolutely no oversight. [Check out Section 8—aptly named, at least.]

 Wrap your head around that for a moment. Then go and pick up the pieces whence they scattered after it exploded and see if you can’t put ‘em all back together in approximately the right order.

 “So, it’s like this, folks: we’re terrible at our jobs. I mean, seriously, terrible. TERRIBLE. Let me put it to you this way: we’re so horrible at our jobs, if we were actors, we’d make Steve Gutenberg look like Marlon freakin’ Brando. If we were athletes, we’d make Stephen Hawking look like Michael freakin’ Jordan. If we were musicians, we’d make Biz Markie look like Dmitri наркоман Shostakovich.

 “Put simply, we suck at a level of suckitude rarely witnessed on this planet.

 “Oh, and also? We’re greedy. I mean, you cannot even begin to comprehend just how greedy we are. You can't do it, my friends. You can't. 

"How greedy are we, you ask? Well, we ran these mammoth companies into the ground. But we didn’t care. See, we got ours—millions and millions and millions per year. Yeah, sure, investors are likely to lose pretty much everything, and thousands of employees—the ones who didn’t make millions—are likely to be out of jobs. Oh, and because the companies were so big and we sucked so bad, we very nearly pushed the world to the bring of the first global depression in eighty years.

 “But if you try to put any limits on how much our executives can get compensated? If, for instance, you say that none of them can make more than, say, $2,000,000 a year? Well, then, in that case, we’re not going to take your money. We’d rather the entire globe was plunged into a depression, and that the United States government went bankrupt.”

 That’s a paraphrase, of course.

 So. Faced with this level of rapacity, what would a rational person do? Play chicken with the fate of the world? Or give in to such blatant extortion?

 As far as I can tell, if this goes through, Paulson would be able—legally—to do whatever he wanted with the money. As far as I can tell, he could buy, I dunno, Bermuda for $800 billion. And there’s nothing anyone could do to stop him. Because that’s what he’s demanding: complete and total autonomy with no accountability to anyone ever.

 How insane is that? We got in this mess because we didn’t have the proper safeguards in place. This maroon’s solution: give him the largest handout in the history of money…and make sure there are no safeguards. 

 Obviously, fire this idiot, post-haste. And get someone competent—such as someone who’s been warning for years that this was headed our way—to fix what these bastards broke. They gambled with, it now turns out, our money. Privatize the profits, socialize the loss.

Well, screw that.  It’s very nearly time to break out the pitchforks and torches. 

I Got Yer Bailout Right Here

So there’s been oh so much I’ve wanted to write about the past few weeks but I’ve had, amongst other problems, option paralysis—there’s so much for me to rant and spew over, how’s a poor boy to choose? 

But just now, pondering—like most of our great nation—the possibility of the first worldwide depression since The Great Depression, I was thinking about the whole “too big to let fail” situation, where joints like AIG could drag the entire world down with them if we don’t do something, but if we do, we run the risk of entering Moral Hazard territory, teaching the folks at the top that it’s okay to take insane risks even with stakes this high, since we’ll have to bail them out again and again and again, while the perps themselves walk away with, in some cases, literally $50,000,000 to show for their incompetence. Socialize the risk, privatize the profits, as they say. 

So what’s to be done? Well, the obvious thing—and it didn’t even require hindsight of any sort, much less the 20/20 variety, just a lack of brainscrewing amounts of idiocy and greed—is to have kept in place the regulations installed during The Great Depression to make sure another Great Depression never occurred. I mean, seriously—duh. 

But we’re past that and the only ones who want to dwell on the past are the ones who aren’t guilty. So let’s look forward. What’s to be done to keep this from happening again?

This is where my latest rant and spew comes in. You are, undoubtedly, trembling with joyful anticipation.

After we put the Glass-Steagall act or its equivalent back in place post-freakin’-haste, we push for follow-up legislation to take place. To wit: the chairman of the board, the CEO and the CFO of a corporation which requires the Fed to bail it out will have all assets taxed at the rate of 99.9%. Not just income. Assets. They lose everything but pretty much what they need to stay alive.

And to make sure that they don’t jump ship when they see things heading south, it’s retroactive for, say, four years prior. You’re in one of the major positions within four years of a company needing a bailout, you’re on the hook. 

A Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac situation would never ever happen again. 

I Love Tax Day

I loves me tax day.

Well, okay, not really. I hate it just like everyone else, only even more so because, well, I’m me and I feel things more passionately than anyone else alive.

(Just like everyone else.)

I’m disorganized and hate details (unless they pertain to who played what on which song on this or that precise date). And, of course, I’m poor. But not quite poor enough (and clearly not nearly rich enough) to avoid paying taxes.

But paying taxes is simply how we invest in this great nation of ours. So when I pay my taxes, I feel good(ish) because I know I’m paying for some poor kid somewhere to have a decent breakfast and then maybe I’m the one who bought him the biology book he’s going to be using. And maybe he’ll grow up and cure cancer.

If you’re to the right of me—and there aren’t many who aren’t—be happy: when you pay your taxes today (provided you aren’t like our vice president and too rich to ever actually pay taxes, having your accounts off-shore and all), you’re buying body armor for our brave men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, strike that: no one apparently pays for that except their families. But your taxes are what built our newest aircraft carrier, which keeps these here United States of America safe from them who plot day and night to do ‘em harm. And how cool is that?

I don’t exactly like shelling out a lot of money to buy my kids shoes, as happens every other month it seems. But it needs to be done because, well, it turns out after careful examination, children need to wear things on their feet so’s they can run and jump and be let into stores and it seems socks alone aren’t always quite enough. So you buy the shoes. Because you need to. And because you love your kids enough to want them to do well, and children without shoes, studies have proven conclusively, don’t do as well as children with shoes. Also? After a while? Their feets get kinda bloody and raw. Or so I've heard. And you do it because appropriately shod with a good pair of shoes, who knows where or what those kids’ll be able to do? You do it because you love them and it's the right thing to do. Still not a lot of fun, maybe, but more more than worth it in the end.

So. Thanks to all of you out there for buying my country a pair of shoes today.

(Metaphorically speaking, of course. As far as I know.)

Bank of America Continues to Suck

Okay. So when I spoke of how much suckitude Bank of America had, I perhaps somehow managed to misunderestimate just how much they had.

Understandable, really. Apparently even they misunderestimated:

Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. has frozen its Columbia Strategic Cash Portfolio fund, which is marketed to institutional investors and has about $12 billion in assets, financial news network CNBC reported, citing unidentified people in money management.

Wow. So maybe one reason BoA sucks so mightily is because they’re actually strapped and therefore have to try to skim off their customers where and when they can.

Huh. That’s…disturbing, considering they’re one of the two largest banks in the United State of America.

H/T: Carefully Selected Garbage

Dear Bank of America

You suck.

Everything about you sucks. Your policies suck, customer service sucks and your phone system damn sure sucks. You suck. Suck suck suckety suck.

You suck.