Entitlement: RW word games to manipulate public opinion, aka propaganda. "

 Entitlement: RW word games to manipulate public opinion, aka propaganda. "

Entitlement: RW word games to manipulate public opinion, aka propaganda. "@DiegoUK: pic.twitter.com/TJNd5nVjo1 #p2 #ctl #topprog #tcot"
— Benjamin's Rush (@BenRush100) September 25, 2013

AIG CEO Says Outrage Over Wall Street Bonuses ‘Was Just As Wrong’ As Lynchings In The Deep South

 By Rebecca Leber

 

 In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, AIG CEO Bob Benmosche came out with the worst analogy for the 2009 financial crisis. Benmosche compared public outrage over AIG’s bonuses to the Deep South lynching African-Americans. “It was just as bad and just as wrong,” he said, because employees were used to a certain way of living:

“Now you have these bright young people [in the financial-products unit] who had nothing to do with [the bad bets that hurt the company.] … They understand the derivatives very well; they understand the complexity. … They’re all scared. They [had made] good livings. They probably lived beyond their means. …They aren’t going to stay there for nothing.
The uproar over bonuses “was intended to stir public anger, to get everybody out there with their pitch forks and their hangman nooses, and all that–sort of like what we did in the Deep South [decades ago]. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong.

It’s been five years since AIG was rescued with a $85 billion loan from the government after the mega-insurer mismanaged itself to near collapse, and it’s hard to see how they were victimized, let alone “lynched.” Since then, AIG has expressed its gratitude by paying executives $165 million in bonuses, briefly considering suing the government for more, and expressing disappointment AIG never received a “thank you” from government officials.
And it’s not the first arrogant remark AIG’s defenders have made regarding criticism over outlandish bonuses. Wall Street and its allies have likened similar criticism to sexual abuse and Nazi Germany.
Meanwhile, pay and profits for Wall Street have come roaring back, with its bonus pool quintupling since 1985 to more than $20 billion. Employment and income have not matched pace. This explosion of bonuses, and its mismatch to performance, has even led industry insiders to deride the practice. Yet the changes to the broken system of setting executive compensation that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms were supposed to bring have thus far not materialized.

Update

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released a statement Tuesday afternoon calling for Benmosche to resign from AIG, saying, “As the leading critic of AIG’s lavish spending before and after its taxpayer funded bailout—and as the son of sharecroppers who actually experienced lynchings in their communities—I find it unbelievably appalling that Mr. Benmosche equates the violent repression of the African American people with congressional efforts to prevent the waste of taxpayer dollars. If these statements are true, I believe he has demonstrated a fundamental inability to lead this modern global company in a responsible manner—a company that exists today only because it was rescued by the American taxpayers—and that he should resign his position as CEO immediately.”

Update

Benmosche emailed the following statement to the Huffington Post after their article on the comments was published: “It was a poor choice of words. I never meant to offend anyone by it.”

Today's #Teamster News 09.15.13

Today's Teamster News 09.15.13

Point, counterpoint: Teamsters, St. James debate labor contract snags The Montana Standard ...Some unionized employees have taken a strike vote against St. James Healthcare, but hope a Sept. 19 mediation session will deter such action...
Income Inequality Economic Populist ...The top 1% income earners have captured 95% of the income growth from 2009 to 2012. Folks, that's pretty much all of it...
The Stupid Trade Talk Process Trade Reform ...Yum Brands, the owner of KFC, wants cheaper chicken wings, rumps and other assorted poultry parts. Ocean Spray wants an easing of pesticide regulations. DuPont wants greater protection of trade secrets. Negotiations have barely begun for a potentially sweeping trade pact between the United States and Europe. But the lobbying is already well under way by corporations on both sides of the Atlantic...
Wynne Godley's Crucial Warnings About the Trade Deficit Still Ignored American Economic Alert ...Godley was one of the few mainstream economists who warned that huge, ballooning trade deficits like those amassed by the United States since the mid-1990s would lead to major trouble. Further, Godley’s model notably that reducing domestic budget deficits without addressing trade deficits would bring on a thoroughly unnecessary disaster on the home front – and in the rest of a world so heavily dependent on supplying American demand...
McViolation: How American Fast Food Operators Break the Law Huffington Post ...Among the most common violations is wage theft, a term used to describe practices that deprive employees of wages to which they are legally entitled. Across all industries, American workers lose an estimated $30 billion a year to wage theft...
Where's the Beef?: The First Thing Obama Can Do By Himself to Create Good Jobs Next New Deal ...A presidential executive order could directly help Lucila and the millions like her who manufacture uniforms for our military, care for our elders under Medicare, work as security guards at federally leased buildings, or are laborers on federally funded construction projects. The order would require that jobs financed by federal funds require living wages (not just minimum wage or prevailing wage in a low-wage sector), paid sick days, and prohibitions against employers fighting unionization...
Factory Rebirth Fizzles in U.S. as Work Shipped Overseas Bloomberg ...That left the factory workforce through August about 13 percent smaller than the 13.7 million when the U.S. fell into recession in December 2007. In 2000, the tally was 17 million...
Clifford Chance trainee lawyer faces sack after describing his work as 'f***ing people over for money' The Independent ...Clifford Chance, an international firm based in London and part of the ‘Magic Circle’ group of the UK’s five leading law firms, is also one of the 10 largest in the world in terms of number of lawyers and revenues...
Wall St. Exploits Ethanol Credits, and Prices Spike New York Times ...Wall Street ... set out to exploit this young market ... that is what happened this year when the price of the ethanol credits skyrocketed 20-fold in just six months...
How High 401(k) Fees Can Doom Your Retirement Plans Slate ...One of several big problems with 401(k) plans—tax subsidies for retirement savings—is that while some of the subsidy accrues to savers, some of it accrues to fee collectors who you end of paying for managing the plan...
Mississippi sitting on $872 million of Katrina funds Daily Kos ...More than half of the unspent money is tied up in a hotly debated plan to expand the state-owned Port of Gulfport, and millions more are allocated for projects that have yet to materialize. Critics also complain that some projects are far from the Katrina strike zone and don't seem to have a direct connection to recovery from the hurricane, while others have failed to take root or are not meeting promises of creating jobs...
Wisconsin Attorney General Seeks to Vitiate Open Records Law to Protect ALEC’s National Treasurer Center for Media and Democracy ...Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has taken the unprecedented step of asserting that a state legislator cannot be held accountable for refusing to disclose public records in response to a lawful open records request by the Center for Media and Democracy...

Today's #Teamster News 09.15.13 http://t.co/VdAxisl0Ld #1U #union #wiunion #katrina #ows

This above all other factors is the true cause of America's high employment.

This above all other factors is the true cause of America's high employment.

This above all other factors is the true cause of America's high employment. pic.twitter.com/bSyMrbdpAs
— Jeffrey Levin (@jilevin) July 7, 2013

This above all other factors is the true cause of America's high employment. http://t.co/bSyMrbdpAs