Maureen Dowd's column:"Wall Street’s Socialist Jet-Setters”

Keeping Up Appearances

Much has been made of corporate “excess“, even during this time of government bailouts and loans. End-of-year bonuses, office remodeling, fancy retreats, using corporate jets and buying fancy new ones, and so forth. The latest blast is Maureen Dowd’s column, ’Wall Street’s Socialist Jet-Setters” in today’s New York Times.

For the corporate elite, it seems to be “business as usual” until they get fired or their business goes under. So let’s examine each of these alleged excesses.

1) Office remodeling: When recently fired CEO John Thain of Merrill Lynch was pressed about what was wrong with the office of his predecessor, Stanley O’Neal? (Thain had it undergo a $1 million remodeling.), he replied:

“Well — his office was very different — than — the — the general décor of — Merrill’s offices. It really would have been — very difficult — for — me to use it in the form that it was in.”

Well, Thain has a point. His office is akin to the “throne room”. Styrofoam just won’t do

2) Billions of dollar in bonuses: We should not lose sight of the fact that not everyone at the troubled Wall Street businesses contributed to their downfall. I believe that the investment bankers at Lehman Brothers were able to find other jobs. Certainly those who overdid it with derivatives and credit-default swaps don’t deserve a bonus, and should probably be fired.

3) Use of corporate jets: Sometimes this can be very cost-efficient. as I believe is the case for the CEO’s of the Automotive “Big Three” They have no time to waste, so speed and convenience in getting places is crucial for them.

4) Lavish retreats: Well, everyone needs a vacation once in a while, but maybe not a lavish one.

My take on all this: I find the large payouts to CEOs, even in bad times for a firm, to be excessive and repulsive. The emphasis on keeping the stock price up has thwarted long-term planning and research.

Silicon Valley seems to have a better model. Google, more than anyone, acknowledges the role of academic research in the growth and success, and now excess, of the Internet.

Which big firms finance basic research in mathematics, physics and theoretical computer science anymore? Not many, or at least not to a great extent. Government should not have to be the only source of funds. Firms that “cash in” on the results of basic research should help keep it going. But I digress.

As for what’s happening now, with all the bailouts and loans. This isn’t socialism, it’s taxpayer subsidized capitalism. So party on, you captains of finance and industry!

They are plutocrats.

either not reading the article and just glancing at the headline or not understanding what socialism is will equate these people with socialists.

The Republicans have been and will then wage a political campaign against Obama's stimulus package as being socialism. The word becomes demonized as "liberal" or any other term not beholden to the wealthy and powerful has been.

I view this column as a type of Trojan Horse for those people believing and rightfully so that CEO/corporate excess has gone too far. Thus the corrupted wealthy and powerful CEO/plutocrat crimes and or abuses will be subliminally used to wage war against government helping to lift up the people or nation as a whole.

Might be an effective kind of jujitsu, except for the fact that actual social welfare programs are slandered by the use of the term.

Anyone who thinks the President and his supporters are socialists should be reminded that it was Bush, Bernanke and Paulson who nationalised the banks, and they should be invited to STFU.

still walking around and not in shackles. To steal from and with apologies to the Bard "First kill all the CEOs".

From Merriam-Webster:
Plutocracy
1: government by the wealthy
2: a controlling class of the wealthy

We are not a plutocracy. Also, if we were a socialist country, that would not make everyone a socialist.
What we now have is perverse capitalism. Heads they win; tails the taxpayers lose.

People have to remember that one purpose of the tax code is to spread the wealth. That does not make us socialists.
Right-wing demagogues like Limbaugh and Hannity have too many people cowed. We must break their grip.

Obama should help save individual homeowners, and not just firms that are too big to fail.

which is debatable, we certainly have our plutocratic elements, and, hence, plutocrats. Maybe they don't get their way all the time, and we sure as hell can fight them, but the $700 billion given to the finance sector as a gift for no damn reason whatsoever certainly stands as a testament to their political strength today.

Acknowledging that they are plutocrats helps our cause rhetorically, even if we are not, strictly speaking, a plutocracy (which we would be in a Marxist understanding of regimes but not under an Aristotelian one).

individuals and businesses. They have both been shown NOT to work, but rather, the contrary: cause further damage to the nation and its fabric. Instead, at the very least, the tax-breaks afforded them under Bush Jun. should be repealed.

It just shows you how habit blinds us; how easily we become accustomed to villainy even in the nost outrageous forms. At the very time they were enacted, they were rightly perceived as an outrage; and yet now the climate is such that the Republicans have the audacity to want their rich pals to be included in the tax-breaks Obama plans to give to the lower-paid workers.

is that they will stay on strike, as they did in the 1930s. It won't be pretty this time either."

Wrong! They were and are recidivists at the best of times. And as for their finding kinder regimes abroad....!!!! Not even the stupid, crooked, clumsy, perverse UK will be offering "carte blanche" to the effectively stateless "duckers and divers" of the world's plutocracy. The personification of the multinationals in the past? In their dreams. We provided the pivot of reckless deregulation needed by AIG to bring the world to its knees.

with the part you quoted.