Monday, August 4, 2008

Bank Bashing

You all know my opinion about banks, and I hope that you realize that the hatred and loathing also reach to Major stockbrokers and hedge funds. They are the root of the infection that is on the verge of sending our country into the ICU. The greed of the senior members of this society of scum bags takes the cake. They put the money that is put into their "safekeeping" into the riskiest possible investments to make money so that they can pay their inflated salaries and bonuses.

Merrill Lynch loses 10 billion dollars, their CEO gets paid 15,000,000. The same man led Merrill Lynch to announce that it is taking yet another big write down on its subprime securities, selling paper with a face value of US$30.6 billion to private equity firm Lone Star for $6.7 billion. It will dilute its common stock 38% through the sale of additional shares to make up the losses.

Citigroups's Vikram Pandit gets $165 million for the sale his hedge fund to his employer and then goes out an loses an incredible amount of money.

These scum have been sucking the country dry. They make huge, risky deals with other peoples money in order to take huge sums home to their Hampton estates and second homes in Vail. They are not required to give anything back when they lose and they make sure they are grossly overcompensated when they make any positive headway, no matter how trivial of contrived.

Large corporations are no better. The overpay themselves to move other American's jobs to China. They gut the productive capacity of the country to pay themselves bonuses and to play high priest at the shibboleth of "shareholder value".

Folks, we started out as a Republic. We tore apart that Republic to emplace a democracy. Which through its own neglect and greed allowed an oligarchy to take control.

We are ruled by the wealthy, by a overweeening and self-interested group of immoral men and women with no thought of anything but their own "compensation packages". They buy and sell Presidential candidates and have so demeaned the office that it it is now indistinguishable from the office of student body president at your local high school.

Congress is even worse, they really are the "Parliment of Whores" so well described by P.J. O Rourke.

Until the country breaks the grip of these greedy monsters and their chokehold on the political culture of our country, we will remain paralyzed. Our country will be sold off piece by piece to the rich of other countries, purchased with the dollars that we gave these people for oil to slake our incessant thirst.

The country has to break. It has to break down and we have to destroy to power elites that are running the country for their own benefit. When we do that, we will be significantly poorer in a financial sense, but richer in freedom.

4 comments:

Mayberry said...

Lead the way! I'll take financial loss for freedom!

Anonymous said...

Ha, you'll really hate me now! I started a new job today. It's at a bank and I write software for hedge funds. I will earn lots of money and be satisfied doing it! In a few years when I'm 50, I'll give the global corporations the finger, sell the suburban house, and live in a small house on my paid-for tree farm. My days will be spent bicycling, working on the farm, volunteering, shooting, etc etc etc. Smells like freedom to me. I've always been anti-corporation but I'll be the whore and take their money.

Anonymous said...

It is just capitalism in action. I do not believe capitalism to be a long term viable system for humanity - it leads to a greed based society that destroys people, the environment, and everything that it touches.

Rather than a capital based economic system, a LABOR based system would eliminate these multi-million dollar paper shufflers - and the family dynasties that merely inherit wealth and power rather than earning it like the rest of us have to - that cause the working people, the people that actually produce something, so much hardship.

Degringolade said...

Mockum: I can't say as I blame you for taking the job. No hatred is involved. The game now is run by the folks you will be working for, and at the end of the day, it is just a way to put bread in your family's mouth.

Be careful though. The golden calf's allure is seductive and the prices it asks for its favors are high.

I hope you get what you are aiming for.