No one listened for years
But like, "who put us here?"
And who's responsible?
Well, there's no debatin'
Cause if they ask me I say
It's big corporations
World trade organisation
Tri-lateral action
International sanctions, Satan
The rest of us seem to have belatedly cottoned on to the manner in which criminals like Bernie Madoff have operated We yelled and cried at the excesses of the big corporations and the way in which companies could close their operations and default on the pension entitlements of their workers, while still keeping the lucrative annual bonuses for the executives. Even after AIG was bailed out to the tune of $170 billion it seems clear that the message has not filtered through to the company that they have to change the way that they do business. Last week it came to light that the company was planning to honour the payment of bonuses for their executives, which would come in at around $165 million!!! To add insult to injury it emerged that the bonuses are for the staff within the same derivatives trading unit that was responsible in large part for the company needing to go cap in hand to the American people for money. In response to the howls of outrage the company replied dead-pan that it had to honour contractual obligations and that it was required for the company to retain the best and the brightest talent in the industry!!! Those are their words exactly – “the best and brightest talent”, which strikes me as somewhere far beyond unbelievable. As postings on the Huffington Post make it clear the AIG arguments are fallacious on several counts. Robert Creamer comments that
And just imagine how protestations from AIG's CEO about its "contractual obligations" sounded to UAW workers who are being asked once again to modify their contractual agreements to keep the auto industry in business. But the titans of the financial sector seem to have very different standards for themselves and the rest of the American economy.
Creamer continues
Now the CEO of AIG has the audacity to argue that it has to pay bonuses because, if AIG loses it best employees, it would be harder for the company to recover and help the government recoup its investment. These are the best and the brightest? Could the gang in the financial products division of AIG done any worse? They helped precipitate the worst economic collapse in more than half a century.
(see the Creamer article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/aig-bonus-scandal-spotlig_b_175124.html)
The reportage of the AIG excesses got even worse with one show reporting that soon after the second government bail out the executives had been treated to an all expenses paid $88 000 English hunt weekend. Little wonder that Obama weighed into the fray yesterday, stating that “This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed," The Prez then went on to promise that his administration would use every legal avenue available to them to recover the unwarranted bonus payments. The problem that has been raised is that these bonuses were already promised in April last before the Federal Reserve (apparently independent of Congress) authorized the first bail-out payments. The gist of that is the belief that there is a legally binding contract between AIG and the imbeciles who got it into this mess. One new option being circulated in response to this is that the US Government (which now owns 80% of the company) should exercise its muscle as the owner of the company. It will be interesting to see what happens. Americans are appalled by the naked greed of the AIG staff, but are also (according to some commentators like Robert Reich) wary of any sort of government ownership. You have to wonder does the paranoia of the McCarthy era still linger, like the bad smell in an elevator?
But the real news of the last week or so happened with the show down on the Daily Show between two popular tv pundits. So, ladies and gentlemen, in the blue corner is Jon Stewart from the Daily Show (blue because he is a staunch supporter of the Obama camp but confusing because he’s also the lefty that the Republicans hate, and we all know that red is the colour of …communism!!) You may have heard me mention the Daily Show and its host, Jon Stewart, in previous blogs. Along with the Stephen Colbert show, Stewart consistently presents hilarious piss-takes on US society and particularly the Republicans. While Colbert poses as a raging right-wing conservative as a vehicle to satirise the…right wing conservatives….Stewart wears his liberal tendencies on his sleeve while delivering his lines like a naughty schoolboy who has just told a smutty joke. In the red corner (which should be the green corner, to represent money and unbridled greed) was the tv money adviser Cramer. In response to the thought forming in your head, no it is not Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld, but you would be excused for thinking that there is a more than passing familial resemblance there. Cramer’s Mad Money Show is characterized by his bouncing around the set, giving answers to callers on what to buy and sell, all the time to the sound of him beeping horns or setting off other strange sound effects.
Last week a slanging match developed between Stewart and Cramer after Jon Stewart took the financial advisers at CNBC, and Cramer in particular, to task for fuelling the fires of the economic melt-down. In response to the comments Cramer was dismissive of Stewart as an “entertainer”, but Stewart was persistent, airing footage of Cramer repeatedly espousing the virtues of the Bear Stearns stock even as it tanked and went south. One line that I particularly liked from Stewart was that he would be a millionaire if he had have followed Jim Cramer’s Mad Money advice – if he had started with a hundred million dollars! After a week of shadow boxing in the media (with Cramer even appearing on Martha Stewart’s show to put his case) it was finally agreed that the two would square off on Stewart’s show. It was touted with all the hoopla of a World Wrestling slap down. The fight went the distance, but it was a fizzer with the press the next day universally declaring Stewart to be the winner. For his part Stewart eschewed his charming, smarmy, schoolboy pranks to go after Cramer, insisting that he (and the CNBC financial shows) had misled the American population and that many people had lost money as a direct result of following his advice. One key to understanding Stewart’s righteous indignation was the report that his parents had lost a substantial part of the value of their 401K scheme (the US superannuation) scheme. A remarkably contrite Cramer, perhaps further chastened by footage of him that Stewart had dug up from a couple of years earlier recounting gleefully how the market could be manipulated to advantage, agreed that they could have done a better job. He did stop short of a mea culpa and the whole exchange was riveting but very uncomfortable to watch.
It led me to wonder why this show – which wasn’t vintage Stewart – had still managed to attract one of the highest ever audiences for the Comedy Central channel? It was perhaps a tad unfair to make Cramer the face of the unscrupulous and greedy Wall Street types. Admittedly there was an admission from Cramer that he had given advice based upon assurances from the CEOs of companies that were later to go to the wall. Clearly there was not distance between the financial “experts” and the financial sector to ensure impartiality and independence. Yet on another level Stewart’s slap down of Cramer was like watching a deer in the headlights of a semi-trailer. I almost felt some pity for him. Clearly Stewart has touched a responsive chord with the American people who were (and continue to be) right royally screwed over by the financial giants like AIG. Someone has to be made accountable and perhaps Cramer was the Wicker Man who had to be sacrificed. For those of you not familiar with the Wicker Man it is a film that centers a around the alleged murder of a young girl on an isolated Scottish island. The Wicker Man is a huge wood sculpture that is set ablaze at the end of a pagan celebration. The plot revelation is that the detective has been lured to the island and that the girl hasn’t died at all (look away now if you don’t want me to spoil the ending). In the end the detective is sacrificed in the Wicker Man funeral pyre to appease the gods and ensure that the apple harvest will not fail a second time. A long winded analogy but perhaps the American public needed a sacrifice, some sort of punching bag, when they know that the Bernie Madoffs of the world, and the faceless AIG executives will continue to be largely unscathed and, even worse, show no contrition for their excesses. Litigation spanning years and the anonymity of the criminals is all frustrating to the middle America at risk of losing their jobs, health insurance and homes. So I think Jon Stewart’s role as the unmasked avenger can perhaps be seen in light of the lines of the Paul Kelly song that soothe us with the assurance that:
They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn
And in the hour of greatest slaughter the great avenger is being born.
If Obama is going to turn the US economy (and nation) around then he possibly needs people like Jon Stewart riding shot-gun. Stewart’s Robin, to Obama’s Batman makes perfect sense to me. We need new super-heroes, the Watchmen for the new millennium…hmm who else can we recruit?
(P.S. The Daily show episode featuring the face off is here:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=221516&title=jim-cramer-unedited-interview
(P.P.S. If you are intrigued by the Wicker Man plot for heaven’s sake don’t go with the awful Nicholas Cage re-make. There is only one version, starring Edward Woodward from 1973, that is worth watching. Beware of imitations!)
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