Robber Barons

Definition:

Robber baron is a term that revived in the 19th century in the United States as a reference to businessmen and bankers who dominated their respective industries and amassed huge personal fortunes, typically as a direct result of pursuing various anti-competitive or unfair business practices. The term may now be used in relation to any businessman or banker who is perceived to have used questionable business practices or scams in order to become powerful or wealthy (placing them in power of everything having controlled most business affairs.)

The term derives from the medieval German lords who illegally charged exorbitant tolls against ships traversing the Rhine river (see robber baron). There has been some dispute over the term’s origin and use. It was popularized by U.S. political and economic commentator Matthew Josephson during The Great Depression in a 1934 book. He attributed its first use to an 1880 anti-monopoly pamphlet in which Kansas farmers applied the term to railroad magnates. The informal term captains of industry may sometimes be used to avoid the negative connotations of “robber baron”. Recently the term “Robber ‘Boomer’ Baron” has been used to describe the undisciplined greed of financial ‘robbers’ during the financial meltdown in 2008 and 2009.[citation needed]

Nearly 700 at Merrill in Million-Dollar Club

For nearly 700 lucky Merrill Lynch employees, 2008 was a million-dollar year, even though the brokerage firm lost $27 billion.
On a day the chief executives of eight large banks were questioned about their industry’s excesses on Capitol Hill, Andrew M. Cuomo, the attorney general of New York State, raised hackles by disclosing how Merrill Lynch distributed its 2008 bonus pool. The payments, made just before Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America in December, have already stirred anger for being paid earlier than usual. And Mr. Cuomo made it clear that the bulk of the bonuses were paid to a small portion of Merrill Lynch’s 39,000 employees.

“Merrill chose to make millionaires out of a select group of 700 employees,” Mr. Cuomo wrote in the letter, which was sent to the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday night.

The disclosure again puts Wall Street’s compensation system, which has long rewarded select individuals with handsome bonuses, under the microscope.

Many of the questions at Wednesday’s hearing in Washington centered on whether banking chiefs would take bonuses, and Mr. Cuomo has homed in on the payments made to executives by banks that have received more than $350 billion from the federal government. That banks have collectively lost hundreds of billions of dollars has only fueled public scorn.

According to the Financial Times, this is how the Bonuses broke down:

Nearly 700 Merrill Lynch executives had cash bonuses of more than $1m each for last year, New York’s top law enforcement official disclosed on Wednesday.

$121m paid to the top four

next 10 recipients took home $128m

top 149 bonus recipients got a total of $858m

In all, Mr Cuomo determined that 696 employees of Merrill Lynch received a bonus of at least $1m (each) for the year.

Nuff said, these greedy creeps are living high off the hog of the American taxpayer. We do not want outrage, We want ANSWERS!!!!!

What Conflucians want:

DISGORGEMENT

COUGH IT UP

TELEVISED TRIALS

PLACED IN STOCKS

FLOG THEM

WEARING SIGN BOARDS IN FRONT OF UNEMPLOYMENT OFFICES

COUGH IT UP GLUTTONS

MONEY BACK AND ACCOUNTABILITY

MAKE THEM HOMELESS

TARRED AND FEATHERED

RUN OUT OF TOWN ON A RAIL

DRAWN AND QUARTERED

COMMUNITY SERVICE AT SOUP KITCHENS, UNEMPLOYMENT LINES AND SHELTERS

DEFENSTRATE

DISMEMBER

FREEZE ASSETS

INDICT

TARGET INDIVIDUALS NOT INSTITUTIONS

START INVESTIGATING

Thursday: What the bankers bought with $600 million.

No seppuku for them.

Last week, we briefly discussed Japan’s lost decade.  In short, it goes like this: Japan’s bubble burst back in 1990-91 with the collapse of their real estate market.  The Japanese government took a mostly hands off approach to the recovery and even imposed some austerity measures, like tax increases.  That made their recession worse.  It wasn’t until 2001 when a new prime minister appointed a whiz of a finance guy that the Japanese economy started to come out of it’s big, black hole.  The remedy that worked was- ta-da-da!- getting tough with the banks.  Yes, the banks were mainlining borrowed money and using it to create even more ingenious ways of making up their lost cash.  Adam Posen called it “gambling with resurrection”.  The Japanese finally realized that being co-dependent to an industry with a gambling addiction was not in anyone’s best interest so they forced the banks into sobriety and voile!, the Japanese economy started to recover.  (I am beginning to see why the banking industry might not have wanted Hillary Clinton.)

Unfortunately, that’s not the approach we in the US are going to take.  No, we are not going to force the banks and bankers to have a day of reckoning.  We are going to postpone the intervention so we can draaaaaggg this recession out.  Why?  Well, to my untrained, non-econ eye, it appears that bankers and their shareholders are more equal than the rest of us wretched refuse.  The recession is going to be hard but not as hard on the bankers as it could be and, really, isn’t that what we all live for?  To make sure that the people who aspired to those positions can live in the style to which they have become accustomed?  YOU may get laid off and have to suffer, but why should they?  If they are living well, they serve as shining beacons on a hill, examples to us all.   We can all look up and say, “My tax dollars paid for that”.  It’s something to be proud of.

OK, some people in Connecticut clearly haven’t gotten the memo that we are to leave the poor bankers and their government welfare bonuses alone.  They are littering the poor, hapless bankers’ yards with furniture, simulating foreclosure.  That just pisses bankers off.  First they have to get Manuel to clean it all up and then they have to fly off to Aspen *weeks* earlier than they intended to.  What do these people want from them??  Isn’t it enough that they may be forced to survive on a measley $500K?

For those of you who want to know what Geithner’s plan means and how it will keep bankers safe, check out the two most recent podcasts from Planet Money:

Get Tougher, Please – Guest Adam Posen describes what needs to be done to banks to shorten the recession sensibly.

How to Save a Bank – A critique of the Geithner’s plan.  It falls short of what needs to be done to banks to shorten the recession sensibly.

At the end of yesterday’s podcast, I got a distinct impression that Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg felt betrayed and depressed by the whole proposal.  You can hear it in their voices.  Jeez, I hope they weren’t Obamaphiles because that kind of rude awakening sucks, er, is of low quality. But what did we expect from Obama who got nearly a billion in campaign contributions from the Wall Street gang?  They need to keep shooting up and hoping that their brilliant schemes will pay off like one of Ralph Cramden’s “Get-Rich-Quick” ideas.

Oh, and one other thing.  I have read rumors that someone is floating the idea to tap into the Social Security trust fund for cash to get the economy rolling again.  Just a short term loan or something.  Yeah, Yeah, it’s just a parody but let’s just take the idea out of circulation right now.  Some of us who diligently stashed away money in our 401K’s are now looking at pretty fricking bleak retirements.  We may not have time to recover our losses before we’re given our gold watches.  Social Security had better be there for us, especially those of us who have been paying the surplus funds since we started working.  I’ll start my own March on Washington if anyone even *thinks* about tapping into it.

That’s a promise.

Why the Seventies Really Sucked Reason #2912

Bay City Rollers

My (no longer) secret shame: I owned this on 45 rpm

This is an open whatever.

AFSCME – The F**king Union That Works For You!

NSFW – Profanity

GOP Rep. Eric Cantor got mad at the union and prepared this faux ad.  His office has apologized, but the video has gone viral.

Bill would let doctors refuse to do abortions if Legislature OKs

The newly appointed Governor of Arizona, a republican, Jan Brewer who has a:

very consistent pro-life track record

may get the opportunity to sign a bill proposed in the AZ legislature that:

combines provisions from a handful of anti-abortion bills vetoed by former Gov. Janet Napolitano in past years. Among them, the proposal would:

Similarly, the proposal – House Bill 2564 – would allow any hospital worker or health professional to refuse to participate in an abortion or dispense medication to abort a pregnancy.

• Require that minors seeking an abortion first receive written, notarized consent from a parent or guardian.

• Mandate a 24-hour “reflection period” before any adult woman could undergo the procedure.

• Bar any individual who is not a physician from performing a surgical abortion.

Gov. Jan Brewer became Governor after former Gov. Janet Napolitano accepted the position of Homeland Security Secretary in the Obama Administration. Arizona’s State Senate and House are controlled by Republicans.

I wonder if Barack Obama will sign the Freedom of Choice Act (like he promised) which will put this conscience rule and law business to rest. I have doubt.

on edit, here is the summary of FOCA from wiki:

The Freedom of Choice Act (H.R. 1964/S. 1173) was a bill in the 110th United States Congress which “declares that it is the policy of the United States that every woman has the fundamental right to choose to bear a child; terminate a pregnancy prior to fetal viability; or terminate a pregnancy after viability when necessary to protect her life or her health.

It prohibits a federal, state, or local governmental entity from denying or interfering with a woman’s right to exercise such choices; or discriminating against the exercise of those rights in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information. Provides that such prohibition shall apply retroactively.

It also authorizes an individual aggrieved by a violation of this Act to obtain appropriate relief, including relief against a governmental entity, in a civil action.”[1]

Here is Obama promising to sign FOCA as his first act in office:

P.S. Listen Tonight at 8pm est. to the Lions Share followed directly by The View From Under the Bus. Click here to listen and call in at (347)539-5420

Change that will make you want to vomit….

Phil Bredesen, TN Governor in the running for HHS.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two governors appear to lead the pack when it comes to heading the Health and Human Services Department for President Barack Obama.

One of those governors is already under attack. The other was seen Thursday night meeting at the Ritz Carlton with Obama’s senior adviser.

The pick of Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen would clearly cause Obama problems with some of the advocacy groups calling for a health care overhaul this year. One of those groups, Health Care for America Now, put out a statement Friday saying it “couldn’t think of anyone more wrong for health care reform or more wrong for America.”

The advocacy groups have battled Bredesen over the years for his efforts to cut spending in the state’s TennCare program, which provides health care for the poor.

Please watch:

Wednesday: Brace yourself, Sirota, Obama’s landing in the Hudson

Normally, we don’t respond to our critics.  There are plenty out there who hate our guts and make it their mission in life to criticize us. There is something about people like us who will not submit to enormous loads of peer pressure that just drive some sites to insensible frothing.  We ignore them.  But when David Sirota wrote his petulant tantrum piece for OpenLeft, well, that’s a different kettle of fish.  David is(was) a real journalist who wrote some searing prose back in the day.  He’s not like the talentless beligerents who stalk and provoke us for some reaction that they can later blow out of proportion.  Indeed, David didn’t even mention us by name.

I looked for some clues in David Sirota’s biography that would explain how it was that he went so totally off the rails last year for Obama.  Sirota is part of the self-appointed Creative Class.  We real creative class members would appreciate it if these wannabees would stop using our class designation but we’ll put that aside for the moment.  David was 5 years old when Reagan took office.  He was 18 when Bill Clinton took the oath.  David doesn’t know anything about The Great Society or the War on Poverty other than what he heard at his pappy’s knees.  David went to Northwestern University for his journalism degree.  Not too shabby.  His choice of school and major indicates a degree of financial independence that those of us from working class backgrounds did not enjoy.  We who were the first in our families to go to college picked majors that would help us earn a living.  There was no poetry and politics in our future.  I could be completely wrong about David but he seems to be one of the people Pacific John talked about in the Audacity of Democracy.  He’s a child of the Reagan years.  Reagan put the wealthy and well connected back in the driver’s seat.

Sirota has a bone to pick with the Clintons.  I’m not sure that Sirota was really paying attention to what happened in the 90’s.  I understand.  It’s hard to be focused when you’ve got mid-terms and Friday night keggers.  Essentially what happened was that a young, charismatic governor and his brilliant wife came upon DC like gangbusters and got their asses handed to them by the Villagers.  They had high-faloutin’ hopes for healthcare reform and equality for gay soldiers and open-minded Supreme Court justices and an administration that looked like America.  And they got trashed for that.  Then the Democrats misused their franking privileges and their bank to float bad checks and lost Congress.  The Republicans swept to power in 1994 and that was the end of The Man from Hope.  He spent the next 6 years dealing with an overtly hostile Congress and media.  But a funny thing happened.  Despite all of the investigations, which lead to nothing more than a girl in a beret, Clinton left the country in peace with a surplus.  Did he achieve all he wanted?  No, I don’t think so.  He made a lot of compromises along the way.  Sometimes he tried to acommodate Republicans when he thought business would profit.  Sometimes, he compromised because he just didn’t have the numbers to prevail and all he could do was cushion the blow.  But those of us who remember the triumphant night in Little Rock in November 1992 took a collective sigh of relief when the bad old days of the Republican era of Reagan and Bush *finally* came to an end.  We didn’t know that the evil f%&(s were lying in wait in the media and were going to undermine this guy and his wife for 8 long years.

But for Sirota, no good deed goes unpunished.  The Clintons are to blame for EVERYTHING.  The only thing I can attribute this to is the incessant braying of the Limbaugh types and the nauseating amount of propaganda that has permeated every “news” outlet.  Something about the Clintons really upset the Villagers to a degree that I have never seen before.  It was relentless.  I can only speculate that something about them, and particularly Hillary, was a threat to their way of life, class or economic strata.  Sirota, having lived in this atmosphere for most of his adult life, did not pick up on it that Hillary Clinton was the real change agent.  Her election would have finally made the Villagers impotent.  They would have been forced to adapt to a new environment, one where nothing they said would make a damn bit of difference.  She would have been elected in spite of the Village, not because of them.  Just think of that squandered opportunity.

What happened to Sirota last year is in some respects a repeat of what happened to those of us who were 10 years older when the Clintons took power.  He must have been relieved that a Democratic president would finally take over and put things right.  That was our hope as well.  But we knew that it would be a disaster to put Obama in charge because he was not ready.  Now, David can go on forever rationalizing about Hillary and what she might have done.  But Hillary was off of Sirota’s list early for war related reasons.  For some bizarre reason, he can’t accept that Obama was off of our radar for experience related reasons.  In fact, I would have preferred Biden or Dodd to Obama.  (Kucinich, Edwards and Richardson were non-starters to me for various reasons).  Obama was simply at the bottom of my list because I knew he would be over his head.

There are many things that Sirota isn’t getting about the past election that I’d like to clear up for him:

• Obama ran a terrible campaign.  I know that goes against conventional wisdom but that’s why it is conventional and not always right.  Obama threw tons of money in the big states and lost.  He went to the convention only 17 delegates ahead, all of them from MIchigan, a state where his name wasn’t on the ballot.  And the only reason he got those ill-gotten delegates is because the RBC lowered the bar for him.  They were so determined to see an African-American on the ballot that they ignored the fact that most primary voters did not vote for him.  They saw that his campaign didn’t have the votes to make him the nominee and there was no damn way he was going to win a new primary in Florida, so they rigged the primary in his favor.  That’s what Obama’s nomination amounts to- a rigged vote.
• The rigging of the primaries was not a loss for just Hillary Clinton.  And while we’re at it, let’s get something straight: Secretary of State is not some consolation prize for not getting to be president.  There is no consolation prize for that.  She lost and she will never get a second crack at it.  She’s dealing with it the best way she can and we have moved on from that.  No, the real loss from the rigging of the primaries was for the voters.  They got snookered into thinking that their votes actually counted but really, a bunch of guys in a backroom cut a deal and cut the voters out.  That’s why we’re here, David.  We’re the people whose votes were callously cast away because we wanted someone else.  And we were the majority.
• Barack Obama sailed to victory on a sea of cash provided by some very wealthy and well connected people.  Those people don’t give a damn about the voters either.  All they wanted was to see which of the candidates was most susceptible to their siren song.  Obama was their dude.  He took the money and because he is a weak politician with no coalitions that he has banked over the years through hard work. He is beholden to the moneymen and the Villagers who are their front guys.
• Barack Obama is out of his depth and we voters are screwed.  This is the scariest part of the whole scenario.  A responsible president would have come into this office with a set of plans and policies to meet the crisis that was already in play before he was inaugurated.  He should have been making the morning talk show circuit months ago laying the groundwork for ideas that he planned to implement.  He should have hit the ground running with his cabinet appointments and had a deep bench in case of a nanny problem.  We are in a global economic crisis and there are rumors that back in September, the world nearly plunged back into the Dark Ages financially.  And what do we get?  He appears to be making it up as he goes along.  He’s giving way to the centrists and Republicans.  He still doesn’t have a cabinet secretary for HHS and Labor.  What is going on??

Obama’s response so far has been inadequate, short sighted, arrogant, ill-prepared and ineffective.  As a result, the recession will be longer, deeper and more painful for all of us.  His behavior and actions are a direct result of his 1.) lack of experience and 2.) lack of political philosophy.  It turns out that he really believed his post partisan shtick, which makes him not brilliant after all. In essence, what we have is a jumbo jet preparing to make a crash landing in the Hudson and instead of an experienced pilot at the controls, we have a guy who has never even soloed.  This is about OBAMA, David, not Hillary.  Obama has spent his whole career in campaign mode, not governing mode.  This fact should have been clear to you last year.  It was clear to us.

Now, do I blame Obama for the fact that the economy is in the mess it’s in?  No.  No one here would make that mistake.  But we do blame him for making it worse than it has to be because he is not the person we need right now.  Hillary might have been better but that’s something we’ll never know.  What we *do* know is that a year ago at this time, most of us bitter losers thought that Obama was not ready for prime time.  That is why we did not vote for him.  We didn’t say, “Oh, yeah, the economy is going to tank.  The signs are all there.  But wouldn’t it be cool to have Obama?  He totally makes us cry sometimes.”

Our eyes were open, David.  We knew what was at stake.  Don’t tell us to STFU.  You and your dreamy eyed Obot friends got us to this point.  You owe the rest of the country an apology for not sticking up for the integrity of the voting process.  You owe us big time for not standing up to sexism and propaganda instead of indulging in it.  You lost your heads in a frenzy of Obama love while the rest of us trembled with fear of an upcoming economic downturn.

We kept our heads and now we have the right and obligation to speak up.   And we’re going to do that every chance we get.

Tuesday Night Open Thread

Papa u mau mau (what’s on your mind?)

Old Controversy, the debate and inequity lives on…

Women pay .73cents more on average than men for laundered shirts. Why? The excuse is the press machines are made for mens shirts. This has been a well known problem and been used as an excuse for over 30 years. The dry cleaners say they hand press women’s shirts. Why haven’t they made press machines that can handle women’s shirts?

Janet Floyd, activist, wants to end the practice. Very interesting. She appeared on WNYC and explained the situation and took some interesting calls.

She was also featured in the NYT:

For women across New York City and beyond, it basically amounts to being taken to the cleaners. Women’s shirts often cost much more to launder than men’s, even if they are smaller and made of the same cloth.

Many women grudgingly accept the higher prices, much as they accept the perennial lack of pockets in their pants and the lengthier lines outside their restrooms. But not Janet Floyd, a 44-year-old mother, community volunteer and newly minted missionary for gender equality in the wash place.

Ms. Floyd’s crusade began in November, when, she said, she and her husband brought their nearly identical blue Brooks Brothers oxfords to be laundered at Best Cleaners in Chelsea. The shirts came back clean, but Ms. Floyd discovered that hers cost $8.75, his $7. read more…..

Listen to her interview on WNYC . . . . here

Discuss……..

On a side note, Henrietta Hughes (the homeless woman who told Barack she needs a house and got one) was a touching story, but I have to point out the blond woman in the left corner of the screen after Barack kisses Henrietta:

She is spikin the koolaid INTRAVENOUSLY

Tim Geithner; Herbert Hoover – Depression revisited

Unlike fellow Conflucian “headliner” Dakinkat (see her must-read post), I am not an economist, and I do not purport to have expertise in the field. I offer this post based on the claims of Paul Krugman and Barack Obama that the fiscal crisis facing the United States and its citizens today is more comparable to the conditions of the Great Depression than any other crisis faced since then. If that is true, no wonder I find the details of whiz-kid tax evader Tim Geithner’s newly dubbed Financial Stability Act (this is NOT the TARP redux bill just passed by the Senate) personally depressing. So, by the way, does Wall Street.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner announced a vast new rescue plan for the financial sector. Stocks plunged following the unveiling of the program to use $1.5 trillion or more in public and private funds to bail out banks and financial institutions and thaw frozen credit markets. The plan would create a $500 billion fund to buy up toxic bank assets such as bad real estate loans and commit up to $1 trillion to reopen lending markets for consumer, student, small business, auto andcommercial loans.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 383 points in afternoon trading. The tech-heavy Nasdaq plummeted 63 points, and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index dropped 43 points.

(source)

Here are the highlights of the Geithner plan, according to The New York Times:

Now, read these excerpts from an overview of the Hoover administration’s approach to the Great Depression, which set in 6 to 8 years before Franklin Delano Roosevelt was first elected.