Come the revolution

HAPPY MAY DAY!

Come the revolution...

Oh the hubris! A group of wealthy, probably obscenely rich, American is suing Swiss Bank UBS from turning over their names to the US Internal Revenue Service as part of an investigation of possible, one might say probable, tax evasion on the part of these unnamed Yanks.

The list grows longer; even if I have to leave their actual names off of it for the moment.

He's also not giving back Checkers

Disgraced, but not impoverished, former RBS chairman "Alright! Said" Sir Fred Goodwin is refusing to return one red cent of the £16,000,000 pension pot he clearly didn't earn during his 10 year stint at the helm of the now foundering, if not grounded, bank.

This means that over the decade he "worked" at RBS the company put in roughly £133,000 a month; approximately the annual salary of about five of the bank's frontline workers. Should Sir Fred suddenly discover his honour, an admittedly unlikely event, and return his ill-gotten gain perhaps the bank could use the funds to keep about 600 of the 20,000 RBS workers about to get the sack in employment for an extra year. Or maybe not.

All right said Sir Fred

I'm doing something wrong. I'm obviously not incompetent enough. This cunt works for ten years at RBS, drives into nationalisation and at the age of 50, younger than me, ends up with a £16,000,000+ pension pot returning him £650,000 a year!

Come the revolution

Ameica and the world may look to McDonalds corporation to provide tasteless and expensive meals oozing with saturated fat, sugar and salt but, in Little Rock AR at least, don't look for them to provide for their minimum wage employees as they have denied worker's compensation to former employee Nigel Haskett after he was shot by a patron who he ejected after he abused a women in the store. Apparently the job description doesn't stretch to human decency.

Come the revolution...

I'm not sure what the point of this NY Times article is meant to be but I am absolutely certain that people who are making (well) in excess of $1,000,000 a year but have virtually no funds available at the end of their year, who are therefore living pay cheque to pay cheque, ARE INCAPABLE OF MANAGING THE PUBLIC'S MONEY and therefore we won't be needing them in their $3,000,000 or, if the President has his way, $500,000 a year jobs. I'm sure that they will enjoy their live on the dole.

Come the revolution...

...one Mr. James F. Reda must surely be high on the list. Mr. Reda is an "executive pay consultant" and his reaction to the pay cap mooted by President Obama for those starving fat cats running taxpayer financed banks in the US is the following:

“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus”

Well if Mr. Reda smokes I will be happy to provide him with a last cigarette.

And if you think $500,000 per annum is "draconian" he ought to have a look at the pay packet of American living in the real world; assuming said American is getting a pay packet at all anymore.

America's real entitlement problem

The (not very) eminent bad comedian and worse columnist Ben Stein has penned a column that seems to ask us to feel sorry for those who shouldn't have any expectation that anyone should feel sorry for them; especially in a nation that prides itself on "hard work" and "self reliance" (whatever meaning either of them have in modern America). Whilst he eventually extols the virtues of "saving" he seems to miss the basic problem entirely, especially in the case of his first example.

His first sob story relates to a woman that he "has known since she was a teenager" without noting how long that may have been. Her terrible story is that she is living in a "house", and I use the word reservedly, on which she has a 2,200,000 USD interest only mortgage with payments of about 12,000 USD a month. She is scrapping by on 20,000 USD graciously provided by her ex-husband (10K in the form of child support and 10K in alimony). Fortunately she seems to have a sugar daddy of some sort who helps out by picking up the credit card bills and other incidentals that her additional 8,000 a month doesn't seem to cover. She has a bit of a shop that Mr. Stein seems to describe as a hobby rather than an enterprise. Suddenly because the value of her "house" is falling and her alimony is running out she is suddenly worried about money. I don't know how long she has been sucking at the entitlement teat but she has clearly, for reasons not entirely clear, been living well beyond her means.

There are currently, and there will be many more, tragic victims of the economic crisis in America and across the world. This woman is clearly not one of them. I don't mean to sound hard and unfeeling but is there any other option in this case?

Mr. Stein's other worry seems to be case of his handsome, if irresponsible, son who seems to have gone and got himself married even though his only means of support seems to be his father.

I haven't even crocodile tears for these Americans who seem to feel that not only does America owe them a living (without working or working very hard) but it owes them a living and a lifestyle that very, very few of the planet's 6,000,000,000 human being can even dream of.

Come the revolution!

Come the revoluition...

...we have another fine candidate for first up against the wall in Alexandre Mouradian who is suing his employers for the incredibly precise sum of £92,571 for allegedly short changing him over the bonus he awarded himself (yes - you read that correctly) for the second half of 2006. The amount he is suing for represents about 5% of his total compensation of £1,632,000 for the second half of 2006. (Yes - you read that correctly - for the second half of 2006!) Mr. Mouradian had awarded himself 92% of the total bonus for that period and allocated absolutely nothing to about half his staff.

I think the "cunt" word is the only adequate description, don't you?

Come the revoluition...

...these cunts are first up against the wall (and I mean that)!

Time to just say no (or when $700,000,000 just isn't enough)!

The ink isn't even dry on US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's income redistribution plan for the rich and already the greedy fuckers are begging for more.

This deal cannot be allowed to go through as is. The have to been a number of quid pro quo including:

• serious new regulation of the banking and investment industries, especially derivatives and short selling;
• limits on executive salaries and bonuses, including the cancellation of bonuses and golden parachutes for any and all executives and board members of firms who receive these taxpayer subsidies for, say, the next five years;
• and a means for the return of some portion of the taxpayer investment from future profits;
• additional protections from foreclosure for primary residences of middle class, working class and poor households.

If this goes through as is it will be amongst the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class, working class and the poor to the extremely wealthy in history.

Come the revoluition...

...these three must surely be on the short list for first against the wall; especially if they ever have the temerity to suggest that they've "earned" this obscene amount of money for virtually no work.