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Saturday, December 13, 2008
When greed overcomes any sense of shame, Part MCMXVII….
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
… you get something like this:
There’s a delicious and telling morsel buried in the New York Times’ account of the settlement reached at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. That’s the place where workers occupied the shutdown plant until they were paid the severance and vacation pay to which they were legally entitled.
It is an act so brazen as to almost defy belief, and yet it epitomizes a mindset that has become all too familiar:
“At the last minute of negotiations, according to Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois, who helped moderate talks to resolve the standoff, and union officials, Republic’s chief executive, Richard Gillman, demanded that any new bank loan to help the employees also cover the lease of several of his cars — a 2007 BMW 350xi and a 2002 Mercedes S500 are among those registered to company addresses — as well as eight weeks of his salary, at $225,000 a year.
The demand held up the settlement, which was reached only after Mr. Gillman agreed to back down. (Mr. Gillman said Friday that he had sought the money to offset a large bonus in 2007 that he had chosen not to accept.)
….Mr. Gillman’s demands, however, became a major sticking point. “I’m not going to describe to you the words that were used when those issues were brought up,” Mr. Gutierrez said.
Eventually, the parties agreed that the workers would be the only ones to benefit. They would be paid severance and for vacation, and receive two months’ health coverage. The company owners also agreed to come up with $114,000 to cover the payroll for their last week of work.”
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$50,000,000,000 — poof, it’s gone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A lot of the numbers being thrown about in this financial crisis are just mind-boggling. For example, $700 billion. Where exactly did all that money come from? And where exactly is it going? It’s hard to wrap your head around it.
Even that gargantuan sum is dwarfed by the $2 trillion that the Federal Reserve has handed out in emergency loans. Again, where does that kind of money come from? Apparently it’s just invented out of thin air. It exists because the Fed says it exists.
And the Fed refuses to reveal where it’s gone. Somebody’s got it, but they won’t say who.
Now there’s Bernie Madoff, the New York financier and former NASDAQ chairman who has confessed to what is allegedly a one-man, $50 billion investment fraud.
$50 billion? Excuse me, let me rephrase that:
$50 BILLION?
As in a five followed by 10 — count ‘em, 10 — zeros? I mean, your telephone number has fewer digits than that. It’s longer than your Social Security number.
“While Mr. Madoff is facing federal criminal charges, accused by federal prosecutors of operating a vast $50 billion Ponzi scheme, many of his clients are facing an abrupt reversal of fortune that is the stuff of nightmares.
“There are people who were very, very well off a few days ago who are now virtually destitute,” said Brad Friedman, a lawyer with the Milberg firm in Manhattan. “They have nothing left but their apartments or homes — which they are going to have to sell to get money to live on.”
Madoff has been running the scheme for years, probably for decades. And I suspect he’d still be running it successfully today if this economic collapse hadn’t happened along to expose him.
But $50 billion, all gone? Where does that kind of money go?
