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Via Raw Story. You know, I not only want the money back, I want these people put in jail. They took the money and ran from their own culpability:
The CEOs of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, the two investment banks that collapsed during last year's financial meltdown, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation even as the company's shareholders lost everything, says a new report from Harvard Law School.
The top five executives at Bear Stearns made a total of $1.4 billion from bonuses and equity sales between 2000 and 2008, while the top five executives at Lehman Brothers made around $1 billion during that same period -- the period during which the companies ran up the bad investments that would see them collapse in 2008, according to "The Wages of Failure" (PDF), a report from Harvard Law School's Program on Corporate Governance.
"The people who invested in these companies should feel betrayed," Nell Minow, a compensation expert at the Corporate Library, told NBC's Lisa Myers. "The whole idea of capitalism is that the people provide the capital and the executives take care of it for us. In this case, the people provided the capital, and the executives took it."
Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne personally made $388 million in the eight-year period leading up to the bank's collapse, while Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld made $541 million. Bloomberg news service notes that "shareholders who held their shares throughout the period analyzed in the report lost most of their initial investment."
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Michael Moore had a few things to say about the Dow rallying past 10,000 today on the set of Morning Joe. First on how well the markets are doing.
Moore: Oh! It’s so incredible. Yes. Fifteen million people out of work.
Scarborough: Isn’t this a perfect example for you? Isn’t this a great example of what you’re trying to say? How there’s a disconnect between what’s going on on Wall Street, 10,000, and Main Street, 10% unemployment?
Moore: Oh, it’s not a disconnect. It’s connected very well. It’s connected just the way our economic system is set up. It’s set up so that the pyramid scheme that we call capitalism—it’s become a pyramid scheme now—the very few at the top get away like bandits making billions and billions of dollars. And everybody else in the lower parts of the pyramid are told to work really hard and maybe some day they can come up and be on top of the pyramid too. Well guess what? There’s only a few people that can sit on top of the pyramid and it’s just so revolting and so immoral when we live in a country—the wealthiest country on earth—fifteen million people unemployed. One in every eight homes right now is in foreclosure or delinquency. And they’re celebrating on Wall Street? And they’re paying each other bonuses?
Surprisingly Moore gets some agreement from Joe and Mike on the disparity of wealth in the United States. Maria Bartiromo however disagrees with Moore’s view of the news on Wall Street. Shocker right? The Wall Street flack tries to come to their defense.
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Welcome Back to Pottersville: Assclowns of the Week: Nattering nabobs of negativism edition
This is a smart, thoughtful discussion, and Michael Moore is not quite the unquestioning Obama supporter he so often seems to be, as evidenced in this Nation interview with Naomi Klein. He also points out the major flaw in the Obama "Hey Guys, Let's Just Split The Difference" strategy:
Naomi Klein: Meanwhile, we are not seeing too many signs of the hordes storming Wall Street. Personally, I'm hoping that your film is going to be the wake-up call and the catalyst for all of that changing. But I'm just wondering how you're coping with this odd turn of events, these revolts for capitalism led by Glenn Beck.
Michael Moore: I don't know if they're so much revolts in favor of capitalism as they are being fueled by a couple of different agendas, one being the fact that a number of Americans still haven't come to grips with the fact that there's an African-American who is their leader. And I don't think they like that.
NK: Do you see that as the main driving force for the tea parties?
MM: I think it's one of the forces--but I think there's a number of agendas at work here. The other agenda is the corporate agenda. The healthcare companies and other corporate concerns are helping to pull together what seems like a spontaneous outpouring of citizen anger.
But the third part of this is--and this is what I really have always admired about the right wing: they are organized, they are dedicated, they are up at the crack of dawn fighting their fight. And on our side, I don't really see that kind of commitment.
When they were showing up at the town-hall meetings in August--those meetings are open to everyone. So where are the people from our side? And then I thought, Wow, it's August. You ever try to organize anything on the left in August?
NK: Wasn't part of it also, though, that the left, or progressives, or whatever you want to call them, have been in something of a state of disarray with regard to the Obama administration--that most people favor universal healthcare, but they couldn't rally behind it because it wasn't on the table?
MM: Yes. And that's why Obama keeps turning around and looking for the millions behind him, supporting him, and there's nobody even standing there, because he chose to take a half measure instead of the full measure that needed to happen. Had he taken the full measure--true single-payer, universal healthcare--I think he'd have millions out there backing him up.
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Michael Moore hits back at Wolf Blitzer for his question about "the charge that either has been made or will be made that (he) is being hypocritical". Blitzer seems to have a bit of trouble understanding that someone can be wealthy themselves and still care about the poor and as Moore notes, those two things don't have to be at odds with each other.
BLITZER: But let's talk about -- most people going to see this movie who don't like you are going to say, you know what? Michael Moore has done pretty well in this capitalist or free market system. You've become a fairly rich guy yourself.
MOORE: Well, first of all, Wolf, there's nobody that doesn't like me. I don't know who these people are.
BLITZER: There are a few.
(CROSSTALK)
MOORE: If you have a list of names...
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: A tiny number out there.
MOORE: Provide me with those names, and I will go to their homes and cook them dinner. And perhaps they will like me better.
(LAUGHTER)
MOORE: So, yes. Your point was, I have done well. Yes, for a documentary filmmaker, I have done very well.
BLITZER: You've done very well. And the allegations of...
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: ... you're being hypocritical.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: Explain, because you're hearing a lot of that.
MOORE: Why am I against capitalism if I have done so well?
BLITZER: Right.
MOORE: Isn't the question better put -- and I'm not trying to do your job for you -- but wouldn't the question better be, gee, Mike, you have done so well. Why don't you just kick back at the lake and enjoy life? Why are you caring about all these people losing their health care and their jobs and all that? You're not losing yours?
I wonder if there was like a Wolf Blitzer like 200 years ago who asked Thomas Jefferson or John Adams or George Washington, hey, you know, you guys are wealthy landowners. You have benefited from the king's system. What are you complaining about? What is this revolt all about?
It's like, sometimes, people, even people who have actually had the good fortune and blessings in life to not have to struggle with worrying about their health care, whether or not it's going to be here tomorrow or the next week, sometimes, those people actually are willing to take great risks and create sacrifices for themselves, in the hopes that others will have it just as well.
Michael Moore joined the set of the Larry King Live for the full hour. Here's part of the first segment where Michael talks about how much richer the upper one percent have gotten, how much Wall Street loves corporate welfare when they get into trouble and why Wall Street and large corporations are happy when they lay off workers in the United States.
KING: Are you saying capitalism is a failure?
MOORE: Yes. Capitalism. Yes. Well, I don't have to say it. Capitalism, in the last year, has proven that it's failed. All the basic tenets of what we've talked about the free market, about free enterprise and competition just completely fell apart. As soon as they lost, essentially, our money, they came running to the federal government for a bailout -- for welfare, for socialism. And it -- it -- I thought the basic principle of capitalism was that it's about a -- it's a sink or swim situation. And those who do well, the cream rises to the top and, you know, those who invest their money wrongly or, you know, don't run their business the right way, then they don't do well.
And if you run your business the wrong way, where does it say that you or I or anybody watching this has to bail them out?
I understand -- I understand why everybody seemed to get behind it, because a lot of people were afraid, because these people down on Wall Street had taken our money and made bets with it. I mean, they essentially created this invisible virtual casino with people's money -- people's pension funds, people's 401(k)s. They took this money and they made bets. And then they made bets on the bets. And then they took out insurance policies on the bets. And then they took out insurance against the insurance -- the credit default swaps.
h/t TheWrap.com
At the Toronto Film Festival, filmmaker Michael Moore excoriated newspapers for seeking profits and for "slitting their own throats".
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(Video courtesy of Hillbilly Report)
Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich absolutely tore it up today on Capitol Hill. In this video he is questioning Dr. David Gratzer of the Manhattan Institute. One need only read the title of Gratzer's new book, "The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Healthcare" (complete with forward written by Milton Friedman) to know what side of the debate he was on.
Gratzer was there to spew lies and right wing talking points about the Canadian health care system, but Kucinich wasn't having any of it. As always, my hat goes off to Dennis! You can watch the entire CSPAN video here.
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