THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

yeah that sounds right.  here’s some nice commentary from WSJ that gives congress a stern admonishment for its transgressions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123793914378932263.html

We have an “insider” who apparently knows exactly how these bonuses were given and negotiated, etc.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29879463/

This gives us a rare look at the difference between what actually happened and the spin we get from people as part of their phony outrage.

This guy who quit seems like a reasonable and intelligent person.

Among other things, he said or implied that the bonuses were fairly negotiated and that even though Liddy came on later, that he approved of them and actually hastened their dispersement (so the public might not get wind of them?).  So when he told Congress that he found the bonuses “distasteful,” he was a (the rest is my commentary) ‘lying sack of pandering sh**!’

This is a classic case (with Liddy and some members of Congress) of someone explicitly areeing to something and supporting it, and then when they find out that everyone doesn’t like it, they say, “Yeah, that’s terrible! How could anyone do that?”

First and foremost, I want people, in the private sector and especially in government, to be honest.  Everything else is a bonus.  Without honesty, nothing means anything.  It really pisses me off.

The stock market was intoxicated with the Obama administration’s toxic asset plan. Whatever its contempt for the upper middle class that acquires wealth through salaried work and bonuses, Team Obama still has eyes for the hedge fund class, which will be ladled out taxpayer dollars to make one-way bets on problematic bank assets.

Here is the beginning of that op-ed piece or whatever it is. Again, I am a smart guy, but that paragraph is totally unintelligible.  And I think there is a typo in the last sentence (ladled out IN taxpayer dollars?), but I’m not even sure about that. I’ll read the rest of the piece, but begrudgingly so.  If you want someone to take what you are saying seriously, which I assume is the intent of an editorial in a mainstream newspaper, freakin’ write so the average person can understand what it is you are trying to say, not so they are so impressed with your (annoying) writing style that they can’t disagree with you!  That is really a pet peeve of mine.  Eric Walker does the same thing.  It seems to be the province of someone who is afraid that someone might find out that they don’t know what they are talking about…

Ok, he tones down his style a little (’seminal prevaricating’ - is it a requirement that you get a 700 on your verbal SAT’s to read the NYT?).  It is a good editorial.

In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would have been a mob.

James Madison
Federalist No. 55

That is probably just the way people spoke that way, even though I have no idea what he saying. If that was your point. Plus, the audience for the Federalist Papers is a little different than that of a mainstream newspaper.

There is no doubt that as all these people who were promised retention bonuses quit, that the people who will be promoted internally (or brought in from the outside), will demand a signing bonus, (or an annual salary that will far exceed what is typical just so that they get the compensation the retention bonuses would have paid out anyway).

MGL, the quote wasn’t directed at you. Rather, it is a perfect summation of what is wrong with the response of Congress over the AIG retention bonuses. It is a crazy mob, pure and simple, devoid of any rationality.

(just as an aside, the Federalist series actually was originally published in mainstream newspapers)

#7

That may be partly true, but the big problem is that it’s going to be a lot harder now to get any talented person to fill those positions. Who is going to want to join a struggling company AND risk having the full weight of the Federal government come down on them if they try to be compensated for their trouble?

That’s what is really troubling about this whole drama. The government is throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at AIG yet it won’t tolerate even a tiny fraction of that going to the people who will be crucial in turning the company around.

Aaron, got it.

The big, and perhaps only, mistake in this whole misguided AIG mess, is using the word “bonus” which everyone, including apparently, the geniuses in Congress, took to mean “performance bonus.”

I guess that not too many members of Congress and the media wanted to take too much time out of their busy schedules to figure out what a “retention bonus” actually is.

mgl, your rant on holman w. jenkins jr made me laugh.  as you’d expect from a guy with that name writing op-ed for the wall street journal, he can definitely be a blowhard.  i find he usually has intelligent things to say but no doubt he’s written some insufferable nonsense - usually when he veers from the financial arena too far.

#10

When the majority of the constituency/audience won’t either, what would be their motivation to figure out the difference?

another WSJ article in case anyone’s interested.  the wisconsin AG telling congress to take their financial witch hunt elsewhere.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123811161545653129.html

"That’s what is really troubling about this whole drama. The government is throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at AIG yet it won’t tolerate even a tiny fraction of that going to the people who will be crucial in turning the company around.”

The part that troubles me most is the billions and trillions thrown at these bankrupt companies.  But I don’t want to see bonuses paid either.  These are the people who lost so much money in the first place.  I don’t think they are capable of turning that company around, and doubt if anyone could do the task anyway.  Better to let them go out of business so a productive company can take their place.

As far as the mob goes, I don’t think it is nearly angry enough. At least not yet.