Market crash: are we there yet ?

[sck5]

PB - who said get rid of them? I just said they were overpaid. Hell, I would be happy to run a company into the ground for only $1 million.

[PBzeer]

So is Alex Rodregiuz, Lebron James, Lindsay Lohan, Bruce Springsteen, and a whole host of other people. That's life.

[camaraderie]

Bad analogy Beez. Those guys don't make more $$ by screwing other people.
We've been through this before. CEO & Exec salaries of Fortun 500 execs 350x the average worker are outrageous and due to a closed society of interlocking directorships and good old boy networks and bonus plans that reward short term performance even though it destroys long term viability.

Corporations are not individuals...they have no rights that society does not grant them. They exist for the benfit of ALL society...not just the shareholders and not just a few people at the top of the food chain. Than can be way FATTER than the rest of us...but this is about them being locusts and a plague on us all.

[PBzeer]

Over paid is over paid. I don't begrudge anyone what the market is willing to pay them. You can't dictate compensation in a free market, regardless of how outrageous the compensation might be.

But the discussion of it certainly sidetracked the points the Welch's made, without ever addressing them, didn't it?

[capecodphyllis]

Originally Posted by camaraderie

Bad analogy Beez. Those guys don't make more $$ by screwing other people.

Chairman of the New York Fed Caught Screwing Other People, Resigns



Friedman is now choosing to resign from the New York Fed due to his insider stock trading. (Sadly, he gets to keep the money he stole). As a Fed insider, he basically started buying up cheap Goldman Sachs stock when he had foreknowledge of the Fed’s future lending policies toward Goldman. Goldman shares closed on Thursday at $133.73, meaning Friedman has profited handsomely, earning more than $3 million in total on just two purchases.

John Dunbar, a senior fellow at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington, said the stock purchases were a “complete conflict of interest.”

“It is almost comical. If you tried to do that in a more traditional Washington bureaucracy, there is no way on earth you would get away with that,” he said.

Along with serving as the Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Stephen Friedman has held many other major roles in investment banking and government. He is a former executive of the investment firm Goldman Sachs; he is the current Chairman of the United States President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; from 2002 to 2005 he was the United States Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and director of the National Economic Council; Friedman is also the Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Columbia University, Chairman Emeritus of the Executive Committee of the Brookings Institution, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Friedman’s brother is Richard Friedman, a law professor at the University of Michigan. Friedman’s son is screenwriter David Benioff.

NY Fed chair resigns amid stock purchase questions

[TropicCat]

Originally Posted by capecodphyllis

Chairman of the New York Fed Caught Screwing Other People, Resigns

Friedman is now choosing to resign from the New York Fed due to his insider stock trading.

Isn't this exactly what Cam just wrote about?

Originally Posted by camaraderie

....CEO & Exec salaries of Fortun 500 execs 350x the average worker are outrageous and due to a closed society of interlocking directorships and good old boy networks and bonus plans that reward short term performance even though it destroys long term viability.

What's amazing is the guy is in a high visability position and didn't think he did anything wrong. Don't they put us "little people" in jail for insider trading?

Meantime, back in our reality... Today from MSNBC

"If laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the unemployment rate would have been 15.8 percent in April, the highest on records dating back to 1994."

Layoffs ease by more than expected in April - Stocks & economy- msnbc.com

Where's Windy's chart? Isn't it time to update it?

[TropicCat]

Video - CNBC.com

Looks like they are going to break up the banks. BOA, Citi, AIG capitol,

Sen Shelby says they are too large to regulate

"Regulatory reform is also likely to include new antitrust authority to block mega-mergers creating financial firms whose problems could adversely affect the overall system. Analysts say, if that’s the case, the government won’t want the too-big-to-fail companies of the past essentially hanging around."

This will essentially negate Phil Grahm's bill which contributed to this mess. Maybe the banking industry isn't running our government after all.

[wind_magic]

Originally Posted by wind_magic

Another month, another employment report - updating our table again ..

1929 - 3.2% / 2007 - 4.7% (u3) / 2007 - 8.3 (u6)
1930 - 8.7% / 2008 - 7.2% (u3) / 2008 - 13.5% (u6)
1931 - 15.9% / 2009 - 8.5% (u3) / 2009 - 15.6% (u6)
1932 - 23.6% / 2010 - ?? (u3) / 2010 - ?? (u6)
1933 - 24.9% / 2011 - ?? (u3) / 2011 - ?? (u6)
1934 - 21.7% / 2012 - ?? (u3) / 2012 - ?? (u6)

Source: Unemployment soars to 8.5 percent; 13M now jobless

Unemployment is improving according to the government. Which means it is still getting higher at an alarming rate, but the rate isn't quite as alarming as it was, unemployment "only" jumped 0.5% this month.

1929 - 3.2% / 2007 - 4.7% (u3) / 2007 - 8.3 (u6)
1930 - 8.7% / 2008 - 7.2% (u3) / 2008 - 13.5% (u6)
1931 - 15.9% / 2009 - 8.9% (u3) / 2009 - 15.8% (u6)
1932 - 23.6% / 2010 - ?? (u3) / 2010 - ?? (u6)
1933 - 24.9% / 2011 - ?? (u3) / 2011 - ?? (u6)
1934 - 21.7% / 2012 - ?? (u3) / 2012 - ?? (u6)

Source: Daily Kos: Official Unemployment Rate Hits 8.9%

Originally Posted by TropicCat

Where's Windy's chart? Isn't it time to update it?

Got it.

[wind_magic]

Interesting note about the unemployment numbers - Jan through Apr numbers show a change of 1.7%, so if that is annualized (x3) it would be a 5.1% increase for 2009, or an overall rate of 12.3% at year's end. I am not suggesting that the number can be annualized, only that it would be a startling conclusion to the year if we end up where we seem to be headed.

[capecodphyllis]

Originally Posted by wind_magic

Unemployment is improving according to the government. Which means it is still getting higher at an alarming rate, but the rate isn't quite as alarming as it was, unemployment "only" jumped 0.5% this month.

1929 - 3.2% / 2007 - 4.7% (u3) / 2007 - 8.3 (u6)
1930 - 8.7% / 2008 - 7.2% (u3) / 2008 - 13.5% (u6)
1931 - 15.9% / 2009 - 8.9% (u3) / 2009 - 15.8% (u6)
1932 - 23.6% / 2010 - ?? (u3) / 2010 - ?? (u6)
1933 - 24.9% / 2011 - ?? (u3) / 2011 - ?? (u6)
1934 - 21.7% / 2012 - ?? (u3) / 2012 - ?? (u6)

Source: Daily Kos: Official Unemployment Rate Hits 8.9%



Got it.

Yup. Unemployment is 15% in pre-Clinton-era calculations, not just the 8.9% to which the feds now are admitting. It will accelerate and exceed the 25% seen in Depression I (12% will be admitted by the government).

At least Obama seems to have some appreciation for the gravity of the situation now confronting America: "This is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression," he said in his first press conference. "We have lost 3.6 million jobs in the last three or four months, which shows that things are getting worse."

America's industrial collapse continues and, in fact, is accelerating.