[dadipentak]

Un-effin'-believable:

"Three top executives of MF Global Holdings Ltd. when it collapsed could get bonuses of as much as several hundred thousand dollars each."

[GeneV]

Lehman Brothers asked for $20 million for bonuses for three DEPARTING executives right before the bankruptcy. Lehman's recklessness and the hubris of its CEO were major causes of the world economic crisis.

[séamuis]

the story cites that these bonuses are for "performance". I find that hilarious in the worst way possible. though in their defense, it doesn't say anywhere that the performance had to be "good". and people owner why more and more people are starting to raise an eyebrow at big corporations in this country that say they can't afford to pay for healthcare, or give bonuses to those that actually do the work, or pay people more than minimum wage, etc. well now we know. because the folks at the top are getting paid for "performance."

[larryinlc]

This is exactly the reason I pulled all my money 10 years ago from managed funds and do it on my own now. It irked me to pay big fees whether they made or lost me money. Heck, it's not hard. I've been at this for 30 years and now, if I lose money, it's my own fault. At least I don't charge myself for be stupid. My returns? I can beat them handily every year, but I'm small which makes it easier to get in and out.

Larry

[Nesster]

.... then there's this:
Wall Street Bonus Withdrawal Means Trading Aspen for Cheap Chex - Bloomberg

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.

“I feel stuck,” Schiff said. “The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach.”

The smaller bonus checks that hit accounts across the financial-services industry this month are making it difficult to maintain the lifestyles that Wall Street workers expect, according to interviews with bankers and their accountants, therapists, advisers and headhunters.

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”


...

Richard Scheiner, 58, a real-estate investor and hedge-fund manager, said most people on Wall Street don’t save.

“When their means are cut, they’re stuck,” said Scheiner, whose New York-based hedge fund, Lane Gate Partners LLC, was down about 15 percent last year. “Not so much an issue for me and my wife because we’ve always saved.”

Scheiner said he spends about $500 a month to park one of his two Audis in a garage and at least $7,500 a year each for memberships at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester and a gun club in upstate New York. A labradoodle named Zelda and a rescued bichon frise, Duke, cost $17,000 a year, including food, health care, boarding and a daily dog-walker who charges $17 each per outing, he said.

‘Crushing Setback’
Still, he sold two motorcycles he didn’t use and called his Porsche 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet “the Volkswagen of supercars.” He and his wife have given more than $100,000 to a nonprofit she founded that promotes employment for people with Asperger syndrome, he said.

Scheiner pays $30,000 a year to be part of a New York-based peer-learning group for investors called Tiger 21. Founder Michael Sonnenfeldt said members, most with a net worth of at least $10 million, have been forced to “re-examine lots of assumptions about how grand their life would be.”

While they aren’t asking for sympathy, “at their level, in a different way but in the same way, the rug got pulled out,” said Sonnenfeldt, 56. “For many people of wealth, they’ve had a crushing setback as well.”

He described a feeling of “malaise” and a “paralysis that does not allow one to believe that generally things are going to get better,” listing geopolitical hot spots such as Iran and low interest rates that have been “artificially manipulated” by the Federal Reserve.

Poly Prep
The malaise is shared by Schiff, the New York-based marketing director for Euro Pacific Capital, where his brother is CEO. His family rents the lower duplex of a brownstone in Cobble Hill, where his two children share a room. His 10-year- old daughter is a student at $32,000-a-year Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn. His son, 7, will apply in a few years.

“I can’t imagine what I’m going to do,” Schiff said. “I’m crammed into 1,200 square feet. I don’t have a dishwasher. We do all our dishes by hand.”

He wants 1,800 square feet -- “a room for each kid, three bedrooms, maybe four,” he said. “Imagine four bedrooms. You have the luxury of a guest room, how crazy is that?”

Vegas, Ibiza
The family rents a three-bedroom summer house in Connecticut and will go there again this year for one month instead of four. Schiff said he brings home less than $200,000 after taxes, health-insurance and 401(k) contributions. The closing costs, renovation and down payment on one of the $1.5 million 17-foot-wide row houses nearby, what he called “the low rung on the brownstone ladder,” would consume “every dime” of the family’s savings, he said.

“I wouldn’t want to whine,” Schiff said. “All I want is the stuff that I always thought, growing up, that successful parents had.”

And so on, quite the interesting article.... goes to show, everything's relative. And once above a certain level of income, people lose touch with ordinary reality. Which if it only affected them wouldn't be so bad - but this out of touch thing translates into social policy, corporate policy, and so on.

[dadipentak]

Meanwhile, in my neighborhood we've got homeless folks squatting in foreclosed properties.

[Ratmagiclady]

Meanwhile, in my neighborhood we've got homeless folks squatting in foreclosed properties.

There are apparently like 24 empty homes in this country for every homeless person, while there are six would-be renters for every rental unit available.... While housing goes to rot, the rents are only going up.... To accommodate all those who lost their homes they invested in.


I live in the cheapest basement in my town and can't cover my own food bill, never mind move the blessed Frigg out of the South.... where they're trying to make things harder and harder while the price-floor of just-living, never mind having an Internet connection to say anything about it with, just keeps going up and up.... I've been too sick, afraid to turn on the heat, and food-insecure to even *use* the space for months.


I may not be 'employable,' but if some bank wanted a house-sitter to keep people destroying what they kicked people who spent life's work on just to make a few bucks off the metal in the wires.... They could do worse than have me for a squatter. I'm this like police-trained swordmaid with a this Old House thing and if necessary, 'spooky' stuff going on.

I've always considered keeping an eye on things and trying to take care of people part of earning my government check, but if the big money *really* wants to make the neighborhood so I can't drive away without the neighborhood getting hit by scavengers, maybe someone ought to be paying *me.* Especially since the Right's making me feel like less-of-a-citizen-enough that I'm actually finding myself less able to stick my neck out, and less *willing* to call the cops.

Which I notice keeps happening.

I've always found the 'I don't want to get involved' mentality cowardly, but this state has taken the previously 'symbolic' 'states rights' nonbinding resolution that says, 'We reserve the right to deny civil right laws if they're Federal and we dont' like it,' to making that *actual* law here... With no fanfare.


No debate, no more notice than the fact that almost all the Democratic candidates we elected in this state took office, changed parties, and started acting like the Christian Right anyway...


What I heard last night kept me up till 3AM, but I neither had the energy to go investigate, nor the sense of security in my own citizenship to hit 'Send' on my cell phone. I'm not proud of that, but it's so.