The Americans are angry

NEW YORK, (AFP) - - An angry US public and Congress demanded to snip the rip cord on golden parachutes used by fat cat CEOs to escape Wall Street's mayhem.... Their push caught the mood of a nation sickened at watching the titans of finance walk away from Wall Street disasters not only unscathed, but enriched.... Those gigantic pay checks, bonuses, and Midas-like farewells encapsulate what the public sees as Wall Street's greed-is-good philosophy.... Public anger at such figures underlies skepticism about the entire government rescue. "We'll never see that money again," said Mathew May, a 24-year-old economics student who skipped lectures to attend a small demonstration at the iconic bronze bull statue near the New York Stock Exchange. "They deregulated the markets and ran wild. Now we're bailing them out." Arun Gupta, an editor of alternative New York newspaper The Indypendent, said there was "socialism for the rich and dog-eat-dog capitalism for the rest of us." "Think about it," he wrote in an email that quickly circulated to thousands of activists and appeared on several websites. "They said providing healthcare for nine million children, perhaps costing six billion dollars a year, was too expensive, but there's evidently no sum of money large enough that will sate the Wall Street pigs." But left-wingers are not the only ones speaking out. Newt Gingrich, the fiercely conservative former speaker in the House of Representatives, wrote in the National Review that the bailouts, likely to top a trillion dollars, smack of "crony capitalism." "Doesn't that mean that we're using the taxpayers' money to hire people to save their friends with even more taxpayer money?" he asked. Forbes, the magazine for and about the rich, also says enough is enough.... " One worker in the New York finance sector, who asked not to be named, told AFP that his colleagues are as angry as the general public. "A lot of people are very upset that managers in their own companies and captains of industry in other areas made some really, really bad decisions," he said. "The most insulting thing is the golden parachutes where these jackals from Fannie and Freddie, having destroyed the company, walked away with millions ... It all comes down to greed." The above are just samples of angry comments by Americans at the greedy fat pigs that threw the American financial sector into disarray.

Unique visitors

Just for information, for the month of Aug we have recorded the highest number of unique visitors for the blog at 8,478. Unique visitors only counts different bloggers visiting and does not include the number of repeat visits or multiple hits per visitors. For Sep to date we have 7,638 unique visitors and given another 4 and a half days to go, we could hit a new high. Cheers.

Leave it to the supertalents

If you really want to find the best supertalents, go to the US, and New York in particular. There you will have the best legal minds and the best financial minds working hand in hand to make the most money for each other. They were the experts that literally control the financial systems of the US and the world. The US and the world are at their mercy. And they pay themselves in the billions annually. That is how good they are. They are all in big deals and mega deals. S$600k is really peanuts to these supertalents. And look at what they have done? Yes, the world's most serious financial crisis can only be made by the supertalents. We are talking about trillions of dollars in jeopardy, maybe the collapse of the world financial system. The US govt's rescue package of US$700 bn could just scratch the surface of this problem. We have not seen anything yet. This is the consequence of leaving your future in the hands of the supertalents. Locally, we have our ah peks and ah mahs seeing their money disappeard in the hands of our talents. Money invested in sophisticated bonds and notes recommended by the experts. What is the moral of the story?

Above the Law

I have been posting about the dictation culture here. This is a mindset that people assume that they can do anything they like, introduce foolish laws and regulations, no matter how obnoxious or atrocious, and think they can get away with it. And they did, so far so good. This attitude and culture is not new and is very prevalent in communist, dictatorship and authoritarian states. And we are one, according to a prominent ST editor. Even in democracies, such things happened. But they have checks and balances to make sure that abuses of power and positions can be checked. The people who made laws and regulations think that they are the law or better still, above the law. They made laws and others obey laws. No one is there to judge them or above them to kick their arses if they floundered. To prevent such nonsense, no one must be allowed to be above the law. There must be institutions that can play the checks and balance role.

Make a mistake, $50,000 fine!

This is another explosive issue. I heard that the remisiers are extremely unhappy about this new ruling that they can be fined up to $50,000 if they make a mistake and sell shares which they did not have in the Buy In market. Many were just shaking their heads in despair. The value of the mistake could be less than a hundred bucks. And for such a ruling to get through, it must have gone through many rounds of discussions among many supertalents. And it is passed. Great piece of regulation.