Saturday, January 31, 2009

Re: Lamentations and Bonuses

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

The sky is falling.

We got the hideous Bush financial rescue plan/Tarp/non-Tarp...I still have no idea where that money is going or has gone. Now we get the stimulus package. Still more talk of the bad investments bank.

I'm thinking now that we should amend the constitution. If there were some way to quantify looming economic crises...based on the decible level of the squeals of congress or the press perhaps. The amendment would delay governmental action. The larger the crisis, the longer the delay. I'm kidding of course, kinda.

The greedy Wall Streeters pull this stunt AFTER the car execs flew to Washington on thier corporate jets last fall. Tone deaf if nothing else. I'd like to see the bonuses paid the execs of the companies actually doing the laying off as opposed to the Streeters. Maybe I'm not familiar enough with the types of things going on on Wall Street but I always think of the Oliver Stone vision of broker types.

3 comments:

Stephanie said...

Can shareholders sue to get those bonuses returned to the corps? I know, I know, corporate veil. But I would think something about the bonus decisions would be veil-pierce-worthy.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Thanks for sharing. I pretty much ignore the headlines. It's always "you reap what you sow" anyway. I spend most of my time towards making myself wealthy so I can help others. Nobody can get away from punishment if they do they do the wrong thing, no matter how it may initially appears, it always catches up with them. Coversely, if you do the right things, eventually you will be rewarded. These positive stories rarely, if ever, make the headlines.

Ryan

Scooter said...

I'm not sure the veil protection applies against shareholders. At least I've never seen it come up in that context.

Usually the issue is trying to get to the assets of the shareholders by some tort victim or perhaps a contract defaultee.

But, I think the shareholders would be hard pressed to order the bonuses returned. The better vote would be to change the directors to administer according to shareholder wishes-i.e., change the bonus policy. Vote the rascals out!