Cannibal Planet

My last post

2011-03-26T13:07:00.002-10:00

At first I was one of the few voices bring up the issue in the U.S. of A. about the absolute War on the Poor. It has become so mainstream in the last few months that there is really no need to keep posting. I like to think that I urged the bigger media on, seeing my blog paraphrased many times by the NYT, Washington Post, and LA Times warms my heart.

I'll let one of the richest men in the world be the closing of this blog about how the rich milk the poor:

“there’s class warfare, all right,” warns Warren Buffett. “But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Keep flying yall.

Tax the Rich. The Richest (and smartest) say yes!

2010-10-09T14:37:00.002-10:00

Warren Buffett just yesterday:

"We're going to have to get more [tax] money from somebody. The question is, do we get more money from the person that's going to serve me lunch today, or do we get it from me? I think we should get it from me. I have a lower tax rate, counting payroll taxes, than anybody in my office. And I don't have a tax shelter -- I just take the form and fill out the numbers. I think that's very wrong, and I think that if we're going to get money -- and we're going to need money; we are not taking in enough money at the federal government level ... it shouldn't be [from] the bottom 98%. It should be more from people at the top."

"If you get $100 billion more of taxes ... from people like me at the top, it means you borrow $100 billion less out of the economy. Somebody has to come up with that $100 billion ... you're taking the money from the economy either way. The only question is whether you take it by borrowing or by taxes. And I see no problem in taxing people at the very high levels significantly more than they're being taxed now. And I might very well cut taxes even further for the people at lower levels."

And for all the idiots who say cutting spending is the solution....they have no clue what the majority of our tax dollars got to:

40% Defense and international security (of which only 3.5% goes to VA benefits!) - the idiots are always asking for more war
20% Social Security -for our elders mostly - if you want to cut this, you probably we're born, you were manufactured
20% most of which is for Medicare - maybe you want to screw the rich and let them suffer?
10% National Debt - "no new taxes" means increasing this part
7% 'Safety net' programs - if you don't want to see homeless, starving children on the street, but the idiots probably don't care
3% Everything else

What I hear constantly from the budget cutters are elements from that bottom 10% Those are the programs that we get the most bang for the buck. For example - Food Stamps are both a safety net program and the largest farm subsidy. Cut that an you kill domestic agriculture and risk millions of children being malnourished which leads to even greater costs.

I stand with Warren Buffett

The Gap

2010-07-24T13:48:00.003-10:00

Racism is indeed a problem in our country that espouses equality and tolerance which in practice provides neither. Not to diminish this issue, there is a global problem that has existed since the beginning of civilization, but only recently has become acute in the United States - the Gap between right and poor. The driving force behind this blog is to show the obscenity of extreme wealth in the face of growing poverty.

Michelle Singletary soft peddles the issue at the open of her article for the Washington Post:

"There is a disturbing and widening gulf between the rich and the poor in America. And it would be even wider except for the fact that so many middle-income families have borrowed their way to a comfortable lifestyle. They are just a paycheck, a divorce or a heath crisis away from financial ruin."

But the staggering statistics she brings up are worthy of a mention here:

"A 2007 report by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy found that the top 20 private-equity and hedge fund managers made more in 10 minutes than average-paid U.S. workers earned in a year. Top executives at hedge funds averaged $12.6 million a week, or $210,700 an hour based on a 60-hour week, compared with the $29,500 the average worker made in 2006, according to researchers."

For her, the roadblock to reform was partisanship and personal responsibility.

For me? The road block is a lack of education about the facts about wealth and the apathy that has been generated by so much misinformation.

Crises of Capitalism

2010-07-18T20:15:00.002-10:00

I know I was sidetracked by the oil spill. Which interestingly enough is following the course I kind of laid out. They plugged the well, but scientists have found that the sea floor around the well head has sprung some leaks...but the reason I'm typing tonight is simply to share this great video by RSA Animate.

Be forewarned, David Harvey uses references to Marx which doesn't offend my sensibilities one bit, but many folks who have been in the educational system of the United States have some sort of 'kill switch' in their hearing nerves. The word Marx is uttered and they go absolutely deaf. They cannot even hear a peep of the most reasonable of theories or arguments when that name is mentioned. It is quite strange indeed.

It's all over now baby blue. Part 2

2010-07-11T11:12:00.002-10:00

"The oil giant drilled down miles into a geologically unstable region and may have set the stage for the eventual premature release of a methane mega-bubble."

This might be just an alarmist point of view, but in the video I posted in the first installment of IAONBB you can clearly see the sea floor cracking open in multiple spots with gas and oil coming through.

If BP did trigger an event of this magnitude as the author above claims, at what point would people actually believe it?

Independence Day

2010-07-04T08:20:00.003-10:00

We live in a society ruled by a select few very wealthy people. It is more like a monarchy with less freedom than our colonial past.

A society whose greatest export is war and culture identity of monster trucks and NASCAR is bent on the destruction of the planet:

Oh say can you seeAt the dawn's early light
What so proudly they nail
By the twilight’s last gleaming

Whose sexless drones who drive cars
Through each per-i-lous night
And the roadkill they watch
Were so fre-quent-ly bleed-ing

And the rockets red glare
The bombs bursting in air
Each end of the world scare
And that flag was still there

Oh say does that car strangled freeway yet rage?
With the slaughter of the land
They make a home for another slave

What do we celebrate on this day? Another chance to buy beer and BBQ? In our modern world, where all the countries are tied together in a very global market place, where all are involved in the health or destruction of our biosphere isn't the idea of country antiquated?

One of my first memories as a child were the moon landings. Not the first one, for I was too young, but the last few and Skylab after that. With these images of our world so etched in my mind during my formative years I cannot sway to accept we are divided into countries. That is completely an artificial construct that, with the controlling power of transnational corporations, is more fantasy than fact.

What we need now is a war of independence from the rule of transnational corporations and a refocus on what is true:

We are one world.

Reality Check

2010-07-03T10:14:00.002-10:00

"underemployment"...right now is 16.6%, just below its recent high and twice the level it was a few years ago

And even that may not tell the full story. Many people have simply dropped out of the labor force statistics.

Consider, for example, the situation among men of prime working age. An analysis of data at the U.S. Labor Department shows that there are 79 million men in America between the ages of 25 and 65. And nearly 18 million of them, or 22%, are out of work completely.

Cap Gemini's latest Wealth Report notes that the North American rich saw an 18% jump in their wealth last year.

Keep watching the oil spill and remember that oil men are still seeing their personal wages the highest in their lifetimes.

3D or not 3D

2010-06-29T18:19:00.003-10:00

There is a lot of talk about getting everyone on the band wagon to make and watch 3D movies.

In a time of shrinking global resources and people lobbying for greener energy, isn't the easiest thing to consume less energy? Why am I writing about this in a blog about wealth and in specific in a topic about 3D?

3D is here to install a new ceiling on filmmakers. Too many indie filmmakers and small studios were taking over Hollywood's turf. Instead of looking at a level playing field as a time to up their game, Hollywood changed the rules - 3D is in. 2D is out. They have convinced many theaters to install 3D projectors and distributors to look for 3D product. Since 3D adds $2-15 million onto the cost of making a film, this pushes most filmmakers back to the fringe.

Hollywood thinks that it will stem the piracy, but that time has already passed, as 3D versions of movies are already popping up on the P2P networks. The other aspect is that it costs $2-15 million more in resources and...here's the sleeper part:

3D TVs consume 15-30% more than their 2D counter parts.

Calibrated TVs
Samsung's 2D UN46B6000 LED 46" 90 watts
Samsung's 3D UN46B8000 LED 46 " 105 watts
Sony's 3D Bravia XBR-46HX909 46" 125 watts

Still think Avatar heralded in an age of eco-friendly smurfatude?

One more thing

2010-06-27T19:49:00.001-10:00

WKRG.com News

The Oil Forcast

It's all over now baby blue

2010-06-27T19:23:00.002-10:00

What is not being told about the disaster in the Gulf is that the sea floor around the drilling area is unstable and it is more likely that the floor will collapse letting loose the whole of the oil reserve.

Video doesn't lie.

Notice oil leaking from the cracks in the sea floor. How are you going to cap a couple of square miles of sea bed?

"What is likely to happen now?
Well...none of what is likely to happen is good, in fact...it's about as bad as it gets."

Remember the amount of money the people responsible have made. How they gained that wealth by cutting corners and lobbying the Feds for less restrictions.

The more you know....

2010-06-24T08:14:00.002-10:00

...sometimes leads you to want to tear you eyes out.

This oil disaster is like the Bush Administration claiming they didn't see it coming. We have one oil disaster of epic tragedy scale and yet this Administration is doing nothing to stop bigger disasters of the same ilk.

"Last September, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration urged the president to halt future leases in the Arctic, warning that federal regulators operating on Bush-era guidelines had "greatly understated" the risks of drilling. Both industry and government, the scientists added, displayed a "lack of preparedness for Arctic spill responses" and had failed to "fully evaluate the potential impacts of worst-case scenarios."

That's putting it mildly. Shell has received all the environmental permits it needs to drill five exploratory wells in the Arctic — but in light of the BP disaster in the Gulf, the documents read like a sick joke. According to the Environmental Assessment that Interior conducted last December on Shell's drilling plan, "A very large spill from a well-control incident is not a reasonably foreseeable event, and therefore, this EA does not analyze the impacts of such a worst-case scenario." The response plan that Shell put together in case of a disaster is equally disturbing: The oil giant says it is only prepared to respond to a spill of 5,500 barrels a day — a fraction of the 60,000 barrels currently estimated to be pouring into the Gulf. Shell, the eighth-largest corporation in the world, has a disturbing record when it comes to the environment: Its operations in Nigeria spilled at least 100,000 barrels of crude last year alone."

Read the rest here.

What is lame raised to the highest factor?

2010-06-23T07:26:00.002-10:00

Today the answer is BP. Yesterday it was Judge Martin Leach-Cross Feldman. (This is the same Judge who ruled on the side of big business during the financial fallout of Katrina.) Yesterday he issued an injunction to block the moratorium on deep water drilling. This judge owned stock in Transocean (the company owns the rig that exploded). He also owned stock in dozens of other energy companies that would gain by his ruling including: Provident Energy ( a diversified energy enterprise with oil and gas assets), Atlas Energy Resources (a natural gas exploration and production company), Parker Drilling Co. (on-land and offshore drilling services, including rigs), TXCO Resources (oil and gas exploration and production); EV Energy Partners, (owner and operator of oil and gas properties), Rowan Companies Inc. (major provider of contract drilling services), NCP Capital Resources (lender to energy companies including Anadarko, a part owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig), BPZ Energy (oil and gas exploration and production company), El Paso Corp. (North America’s largest gas pipeline owner), KBR Inc.(oil industry engineering and construction), Chesapeake Energy Corp. (gas driller), and ATP Oil and Gas Corp. (gas and oil developer in the Gulf of Mexico).

There are laws that prevent him to rule on issues he has a stake in, but will he suffer any consequences?

Disaster = Profit Opportunity

2010-06-20T09:58:00.005-10:00

We now know that much of the financial disaster of the mortgage crisis was engineered by firms like Magnetar that made CDOs (Collateralized debt obligations) designed to fail and then hedged them to make billions.

Now a creepy parallel is emerging from the Gulf. Halliburton which was engaged in well-cementing operations at the time of the accident, had purchased, just 8 days before the accident, - get this -Boots & Coots, a company that does pressure control and well intervention services. From Kansas City Business Commentary ExaminerRomona Paden: "In other words, when an oil well explodes, Boots & Coots can step in and help remedy the problem."

So, Halliburton helped cause an accident just 8 days after it purchased a company that specializes in cleaning up the very kind of accident it helped cause. Dumb luck? Or smart greed?

Now, Halliburton is in the position to make billions off a disaster they were involved in causing.

Are you pissed off yet?

BP: Blood+Petroleum = Big Profits

2010-05-30T00:21:00.006-10:00

The reason why the top executives are screwing the planet

2010-05-28T10:03:00.003-10:00

It's not a conspiracy. It's not aliens. It's not the Masons or the Illuminati.

People Killed, Oil Spills, Business as usual

2010-05-10T17:44:00.005-10:00

No blood for oil is what we used to chant in the streets during the first Gulf War. Now both oil and blood has been spilled on our shores in exchange for not just profit, but obscene wealth. The kind of wealth serfs used to rise up and slaughter their masters over.

BP
A. B. (Tony) Hayward
Executive Director and Group Chief Executive
Compensation for 2009 $4.6 million

Byron E. Grote
Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer
Compensation for 2009 $3.4 million

Andrew G. Inglis
Executive Director and Chief Executive, Exploration and Production
Sector: BASIC MATERIALS / Major Integrated Oil & Gas
Compensation for 2009 $3.1 million
.From 1997 until 1999, Inglis was responsible for leading BP's activities in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.

Halliburton
Which was engaged in well-cementing operations at the time of the accident

David J. Lesar
Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer
Compensation for 2009 $37 million

James T. Hackett
Sector: BASIC MATERIALS / Oil & Gas Equipment & Services
Compensation for 2009 $27 million

Albert O. Cornelison
Executive Vice President and General Counsel
Sector: BASIC MATERIALS / Oil & Gas Equipment & Services
Compensation for 2009 $4.2 million

Transocean
The drilling rig contractor

Arnaud A.Y. Bobillier
Executive Vice President, Assets and Acting Chief Operating Officer
Compensation for 2009 $5.1 million

Edward R. Muller
Director
Sector: BASIC MATERIALS / Oil & Gas Drilling & Exploration
Compensation for 2009 $6.5 million

Eric B. Brown
Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Assistant Corporate Secretary
Sector: BASIC MATERIALS / Oil & Gas Drilling & Exploration
Compensation for 2009 $3.7 million

Steven L. Newman
President and Chief Executive Officer
Sector: BASIC MATERIALS / Oil & Gas Drilling & Exploration
Compensation for 2009 $6.6 million

Cameron International
The company that made the blowout preventer which failed to stop the oil flow from the well

Sheldon R. Erikson
Chairman of the Board
Compensation for 2008 $27 million

Jack B. Moore
Chief Executive Officer, President and Director
Compensation for 2009 $12 million

John D. Carne
Executive Vice President; President, Drilling and Production Systems
Compensation for 2009 $3.5 million

Notice that the company with the most responsibility in the leak part of the accident also is the one that pays its executives the most. Part of our country's on going love affair with the idea that the bigger you fail, the more you should get paid.

Anybody think that any of these folks will even get a dime taken from their personal wealth in the face of this disaster they played party to and profited from?

Simple Solution To Complex Problem

2010-04-24T08:13:00.002-10:00

Here's a tip to the the legislature that can cure almost all the ills of Wall Street: Raise Short Term Capital Gains taxes, better yet, create a new short term capital gains that targets day trading. The problem with the market today is speculation has taken over common sense and research. Traders are more concerned with trends than the viability of a company. How do we get back to investing in stable entities? Make it prohibitively costly to invest in short term profits and if you want to add a carrot to the stick: Lower taxes for investments that last longer than 10 years.

The two things law makers should create:
1. Much higher taxes on capital gains for investments held for less than one month to end idle speculation
2. Lower taxes on capital gains for investments held for more than 10 years to make people invest in our future.

More on outrageous salaries during 12% unemployment

2010-04-08T10:25:00.000-10:00

Distressed assets trader David Tepper, manager of Appaloosa received the highest "paycheck" of $4 billion, followed by George Soros at $3.3 billion, James Simons at $2.5 billion and John Paulson with $2.3 billion.

Hope you're having a good year too.

Where'd all the money go?

2010-04-04T10:10:00.002-10:00

25 guys made and average of $1 billion each in 2009. This is more than even when they were managing the fraud that became the real estate bubble.

Is there anybody who doesn't understand this is the reason why our economy is shrinking? There is only one pie and these guys are taking a bigger portion and putting less and less back into the economy.

Graphical Track on Unemployment Data

2010-03-15T15:16:00.002-10:00

Click on this: The Geography of a Recession

The thing is we're not really in a recession per se. The more billionaires we have, the smaller the middle class becomes. The middle class puts a higher percentage of their income back into the economy. So, the bigger the middle class, the more the economy grows. Last year, the number of millionaires in America increase by 16% and the number of billionaires increased by 30%. This is what is causing unemployment.

What financial crisis? Number of billionaires hits new high

2010-03-13T12:58:00.001-10:00

Worth a read:

"for the planet's super-rich, things are looking very perky once again."

Times UK

Nancy Elliot Anal Republican Creampie caught on Tape!

2010-02-12T11:39:00.001-10:00

Now for something completely different. Let's try to start a meme:

Nancy Elliot Anal Republican Creampie caught on Tape!

Link to video!

RE: GEORGE “W” BUSH: THE LEGACY OF AN AMERICAN “CALIGULA”

2010-02-01T13:46:00.002-10:00

Well worth a read:

We turned a two week war into a 6 year civil war, decades of civil unrest and the utter destruction of a nation. Was it all an accident? Will anyone be checking the “net worth” of Tony Blair, before the war and after? How can America be jobless, broke yet filled with new billionaires?

Dear Citizen

2010-01-18T20:59:00.001-10:00

Due to the current financial situation caused by the slowdown in the economy, Congress has decided to implement a scheme to put workers of 50 years of age and above on early retirement.

This scheme will be known as RAPE (Retire Aged People Early).

Persons selected to be RAPED can apply to Congress to be considered for the SHAFT program (Special Help After Forced Termination).

Persons who have been RAPED and SHAFTED will be reviewed under the SCREW program (Scheme Covering Retired-Early Workers).

A person may be RAPED once, SHAFTED twice and SCREWED as many times as Congress deems appropriate.

Persons who have been RAPED could get AIDS (Additional Income for Dependants & Spouse) or HERPES (Half Earnings for Retired Personnel Early Severance).

Obviously persons who have AIDS or HERPES will not be SHAFTED or SCREWED any further by Congress.

Persons who are not RAPED and are staying on will receive as much SHIT (Special High Intensity Training) as possible. Congress has always prided themselves on the amount of SHIT they give our citizens.

Should you feel that you do not receive enough SHIT, please bring this to the attention of your Congressman, who has been trained to give you all the SHIT you can handle.

Sincerely,
The Committee for Economic Value of Individual Lives (E.V.I.L.)

PS - - Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas and oil, as well as current market conditions, the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off.

Some levels of wealth are just obscene

2010-01-09T20:22:00.003-10:00

I'm not for some draconian socialism, but no one should make a thousand times minimum wage. People do not generate wealth. They just get a bigger piece of the limited resource that is planet Earth. That is why it is especially disturbing that the kind of freewheeling payouts that preceded the current scam are occurring again.

We cannot tolerate intolerance, but how do we avoid the trap of Liberalism?

2009-11-08T23:35:00.002-10:00

It seems in some way the discourse has caught up with this blog. Major media outlets are speaking about these issues. Is two years too late? Don't know yet.

What I do know is we need some serious change.

More and more people are voicing that the dominant paradigm is broken. The two party system is one party with two heads. You are hearing talking heads on CNN saying the things we've been writing about for years.

We cannot tolerate intolerance, but how do we avoid the trap of Liberalism?

I've been standing out in Left field for a long time. Watching the game. The infield dominated by the Dems and Repubs. Watching them throw the ball back and forth. The Dems just are trying to keep the game alive while the Repubs just want to keep the ball.

Me?

Sitting here with the Outfield - Cynthia McKinney, Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, and Lenora Fulani among others. Lenora got my vote for my first Presidential election. Why? In 1988 it seemed overdue for a black woman to be President. It just seemed right. Others have wandered into the Outfield. I met Kucinich before his own party filleted him.

Mostly we watch the game going on in the infield.

The fans don't really see us in the Outfield. They are busy rooting for their teams in the infield. To do our job we have to cover much, much, much more ground and at a much faster pace when the ball comes in our direction. The frenetic energy at that time is intense and we come off as maniacs doing voodoo.

To succeed in the Outfield, you need to be much, much better than the infield. Quicker on your feet. Better at judging when the ball might come your way and damn sure your not going to drop it and not shy about fumbling it a bit if you can't hold on because most of the time you can't. The fans just want to see you throw it back into the infield. Makes you think "Why the fuck am I all the way out here?" The old timers tell you - 'You can see the whole field. Every part of the game. It is really the only place you are meant to be.'

So that is our dilemma.

Stupid is as stupid does

2009-10-22T08:03:00.002-10:00

This is way off topic for my blog, but I had to put it down for posterity.

The rail project on O'ahu is the biggest waste of money in the history of the State of Hawai‘i. $5.5 BILLION for steel on steel rail system.

There is no proof that anyone will ride this system and given the costs, it is pretty sure that no one will pay to ride on this system.

Let's look at a solution that cost less than 10% of the above project which includes free ridership for the first 5 years (to get people used to using it)

1. Buy 1,000 Solar Electric buses @ $120,000 each = $120,000,000
Buses can be more flexible as far as routes go which increases the likelihood of commuters using the service.

2. Build a 300MW Solar Power station to charge the buses = $300,000,000
This way we not only green the island with free public transport, but green the power system

3. New Bus Stations with solar powered cooling fans = $5,000,000
Another enticement to the commuters

4. Free public transportation for 5 years $50,000,000
That is a lot of money, but when you are thinking of spending billions, it becomes quite attractive.

Total cost $475 million

Why is O'ahu digging itself such a deep hole? A $5000 hole for every man woman and child on the island.

Banks are gutting the country for record profits

2009-10-16T12:25:00.005-10:00

Every still thinking American should watch

If you're wondering where your money has gone?

Goldman Sachs set aside about $16.7 billion for compensation so far this year.

"When CEOs of corporations make 400 times what their workers make- this is not what America is supposed to be."

I can't agree with you more fully.

Remembering 9/11

2009-09-11T11:09:00.001-10:00

I don't think revenge is ever a good plan and 3,000 people dying in an act of terrorism, though truly horrible, is dwarfed by the casualties of the wars in Africa and those that sprung from that one attack.

Never forget where the hijackers were from:

Mohamed Atta al Sayed (Egyptian)
Waleed al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian)
Wail al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian)
Abdulaziz al-Omari (Saudi Arabian)
Satam al-Suqami (Saudi Arabian)
Marwan al-Shehhi (from the United Arab Emirates),
Fayez Banihammad (from the United Arab Emirates)
Mohand al-Shehri (Saudi Arabian)
Hamza al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian)
Ahmed al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian)
Hani Hanjour (Saudi Arabian)
Khalid al-Mihdhar (Saudi Arabian)
Majed Moqed (Saudi Arabian)
Nawaf al-Hazmi (Saudi Arabian)
Salem al-Hazmi (Saudi Arabian)
Ziad Jarrah (Lebanese)
Ahmed al-Haznawi (Saudi Arabian)
Ahmed al-Nami (Saudi Arabian)
Saeed al-Ghamdi (Saudi Arabian).

Not a single Afghani among them. Not a single Iraqi. 'Nuf said.

A Top 50 list to make you sick

2009-09-10T18:17:00.003-10:00

In a time when people seem to be working more, earning less, and life savings vanishing - take a look at these guys suffering through these tough times:

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0909/gallery.women_men_highest_pay.fortune/index.html

Notice how Goldman Sachs guys hold some of these top spaces.

An Understatement for Our Time

2009-08-07T08:14:00.002-10:00

My fave part of article?

“The public will perceive this very poorly,” said Frank Glassner, chief executive officer of pay consulting firm Veritas LLC.

Maybe this is an overall understatement for our times.

American International Group Inc., the insurer criticized by Congress for handing out retention bonuses after its U.S. bailout, said the awards will cost the company $249 million in the last two quarters of this year.

The earmark includes $93 million for the division with AIG’s Financial Products, the unit that sold derivatives blamed for the firm’s near-collapse last year, the company said today in a regulatory filing. AIG said the entire retention program will cost $1.09 billion, including $824 million already incurred through June 30 and $19 million for 2010 and 2011 combined.

Sick for Profits

2009-08-06T19:37:00.005-10:00

More at: Sick for Profit

Some added data from Forbes magazine:

If you total the compensation of the top five executives at UnitedHealthcare for the years from 2006 to 2008, it is almost $1 billion dollars with over $700 million going to CEO Stephen Hemsley

And if that isn't enough to piss you off, at the end of 2006, it was announced that William McGuire would step down as CEO of UnitedHealth Group due to his involvement in the employee stock options scandal. McGuire's exit compensation from UnitedHealth was around $1.1 billion.

The Cannibal Planet revealed

2009-08-03T08:46:00.004-10:00

A little snarky, but still has the cannibal planet ideals:

We are DEVO

2009-07-19T10:26:00.002-10:00

The time soon approaches when we reach the 40th anniversary of putting a man on the moon. A huge feat for humanity. A huge feat for science. At the time we hadn't solved some of the more pressing problems on Earth like poverty, pollution, and war, but when those images came back of the Earthrise- most of humanity was inspired.

I barely remember the moon landings. Not the first one, but definitely the following ones. What I do remember is how they affected me. Seeing the Earth as just an island planet in a sea of void. "We're all in this together. So we might as well get along." Struck more deeply than it seems most of my fellow humans.

I say this because instead of being inspired by this event and evolving socially and ethically, as a species, we are devo. We began to de-evolve soon after the vividness of those memories faded. We didn't conquer hunger and poverty. It has grown 20 fold. Wars have become an economic necessity for our government and pollution has grown to the inconvenient truth that most in the world continue to deny.

Forty years ago a man walked on the moon a quarter of a million miles away. Within ten years we stopped sending our astronauts further than a few hundred miles into space. Thirty years ago you could cross the Atlantic in less than 3 and half hours including your time at the airport. Those planes have been grounded and you have to wait almost that long to get on your international flight. Thirty years ago there were solar panels on the White House. They were taken down by the following President and have not been put back. Our public transportation has barely changed and our educational system has gone from a national priority to a nation of apologists.

Without equal rights universally for people of all genders and sexual orientations we cannot say we have won against intolerance.

Some say we have made great strides in racial equality, but then why is Africa, with its vast natural resources of gold, oil and diamonds, the most impoverished of continents?

Forty years is not a long time, but it is the average lifetime of a man in West Africa.

What have we done in that lifetime?

While we remember that incredible moment 40 years ago, we should reflect not on the achievement of the moment, but the perspective it gave us. One bright blue and green island surrounded by the lack of color.

We share it.

If we don't care for it, the color will fade and so shall we all.

iCoverbook from Charlie Berendsen on Vimeo.

Keeping with the theme of the last post

2009-07-08T08:33:00.005-10:00

You think Universal Health Care is costly? Well, you probably wouldn't be reading this blog if you did, but here are some numbers for you if you encounter someone who things private health care is fine and dandy:

ANNUAL COMPENSATION (2006 and 2007):

-Ronald A. Williams, Chair/ CEO, Aetna Inc., $23,045,834
-H. Edward Hanway, Chair/ CEO, Cigna Corp, $30.16 million
- David B. Snow, Jr, Chair/ CEO, Medco Health, $21.76 million
- Michael B. MCallister, CEO, Humana Inc, $20.06 million
- Stephen J. Hemsley, CEO, UnitedHealth Group, $13,164,529
- Angela F. Braly, President/ CEO, Wellpoint, $9,094,771
-Dale B. Wolf, CEO, Coventry Health Care, $20.86 million
-Jay M. Gellert, President/ CEO, Health Net, $16.65 million
-William C. Van Faasen, Chairman, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, $3 million plus $16.4 million in retirement benefits
-Charlie Baker, President/ CEO, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, $1.5 million
-James Roosevelt, Jr., CEO, Tufts Associated Health Plans, $1.3 million
- Cleve L. Killingsworth, President/CEO Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, $3.6 million
- Raymond McCaskey, CEO, Health Care Service Corp (Blue Cross Blue Shield), $10.3 million
- Daniel P. McCartney, CEO, Healthcare Services Group, Inc, $ 1,061,513
- Daniel Loepp, CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, $1,657,555
- Todd S. Farha, CEO, WellCare Health Plans, $5,270,825
- Michael F. Neidorff, CEO, Centene Corp, $8,750,751
- Daniel Loepp, CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, $1,657,555
-Todd S. Farha, CEO, WellCare Health Plans, $5,270,825

These people came to help and help themselves they did.

Thanks Liz for the numbers.

High Executive Pay, in the face of decline...

2009-06-10T09:02:00.005-10:00

...is here to stay.

I've been blogging about the absurdity of high executive pay for over a year now. Still these egomaniacs who are now receiving TARP funds are paying themselves 7 and sometimes 8 figure incomes. These people, who are receiving government subsidies to stay alive are individually making more than 50 average Americans! And Obama's response?

Obama Seeks Powers for SEC on Executive Pay, No Outright Caps

In the past I'd call this pussy footing, but I don't want to offend any pussies.

Please tell me why somebody who has run a company into the ground deserves anything more than subsistence wages? Please tell me why, for that matter, someone deserves being paid 100 times what the people (teachers) who gave them the skill set to do their jobs?

Where is the logic?

Here Bloomberg hedges and tells that any exec pay reform will make these firms uncompetitive. This implies that the execs are solely on board for their paycheck. They have absolutely no desire to see their company succeed. There is no incentive to do better. Argh!!!!

And check out the dude's fake tan as he says that "there is a lot of populist pressure to do this"...can we leave him in the tanning booth a bit longer and feed him to our pets?

The solution to the credit crisis

2009-03-10T09:02:00.008-10:00

Many of the issues I was talking about last year on this blog are now part of the mainstream dialog. Some of my suggestions are now being discussed as actual legislation. Not because of how many people that view this bog for sure, but maybe because of the Butterfly Effect. So, I will give my analysis and solution to the credit crisis, volatile markets and our downward spiraling economy.

Macro-Analysis:
Much of the downward spin of the economy is the loss of access to free flowing credit. This loss is due to a lack of confidence in the banking and investment institutions. The lack of confidence stems from the irresponsible profiteering these institutions foisted upon America choosing short term gains over long term stability.

The volatile markets are a function of both our new easy access to news (much of it wrong or misleading), the speed at which both news and the reaction to news travels, our loss of faith in the economy (see downward spin above), the continuation of valuing short term profits over long term stability, and finally...nobody knowing what is going to come next.

Solution:

Create three terms of capital gains tax that encourage long term investment thereby increasing the availability of cash, stability of the markets, and turn the tide of short term profiteering to create an environment of long term, slow, but steady growth.

The 1 year or less investment:
Raise these short term capital gains tax to 80%. This is to almost completely discourage this kind of investment and yet people can still make money on their gains if shrewdly invested based on factual analysis and not market hype.

The 1-5 year investment:
Put these capital gains taxes at 50%.

The 5 year or more investment:
Drop these taxes to 10%. This allows all investors to see real gains over long term choices. This rewards long term commitments while the overall structure of these new taxes punish short term greed. Because of this almost elimination of tax on these long term investments, money will pour into the most stable institutions of our country.

Looking forward to seeing this enter the public discourse.

Finally Cannibal Planet is mainstream!

2009-01-30T22:37:00.003-10:00

I don't know how long it will last, but I think at least I can take a hiatus in comfort for a bit. Dozens of major media from the NYTimes to the Washington Post, from CNN to the Daily Show are exploring the ideas I've been discussing on my blog for the past year. Don't know if anything will come of it. Wall Street has reduced the typical bonuses, but they aren't giving them up anytime soon. The culture of excess runs deep there:

Of course, many Wall Street employees never expected the good times to end. They lived large, believing bonuses would always arrive, so they are ill prepared, both emotionally and financially, to cope with a sudden drop in income.

“Without a doubt, $18 billion is a lot of money, but it’s a drop in the bucket on Wall Street,” said Gustavo Dolfino, president of the WhiteRock Group, a headhunter for the banks. “These bonuses are down, and the salaries are not enough for these people. They can’t live on $150 to $180,000, so they haven’t saved any money. They put it on credit lines and at bonus time, they thought they’d pay it off.”

I shed a tear for these guys and gals...no that's just dust in my eye.

Just Let It Bleed.

Merrill Lynch goes into the toilet CEO hands out $4 billion in bonus

2009-01-25T20:01:00.002-10:00

It has been a while. What can I say? The extremely wealthy are continuing to eat the assets of our country. This little tid bit landed in my lap while I'm down with the flu.

Bank of America had said the payment of $4 billion in compensation in a fourth quarter in which Merrill suffered $15 billion in losses was sanctioned by John Thain, Merrill's chief executive.

This is the very same Thain that "spent $1.22 million of company money to refurbish his office at Merrill Lynch headquarters in lower Manhattan. The biggest piece of the spending spree: $800,000 to hire famed celebrity designer Michael Smith, who is currently redesigning the White House for the Obama family for just $100,000."

Current prices for MER are around $10 down from around $60 a share a year ago and a peak of almost $100 a share as recently as 2007.

This led me to another article:
$50 billion of bailout going to employee bonuses

You pissed yet?

Check this out
Peter Kraus worked hard in the three months he spent at Merrill Lynch this fall — and the $25 million in bonus cash he earned for his troubles was just enough to allow him to afford to buy Carl and Barbaralee Spielvogel's apartment at 720 Park for $36.63 million, twice what they paid for it two years ago.

Nobody is talking about the $7.7 Trillion Bailout

2008-11-27T07:39:00.004-10:00

Things have gone from bad to worse to all out wonky. First off, wisdom has shown that the bailout isn't going to work. If it was invested in improving schools, medical facilities and general infrastructure we might see a turn around in America, but giving it to those folks who squander any equity they make on higher bonuses and day trading instability is plain foolishness. Now, it has gotten much worse. When Paulson etal announced the TARP Capital Purchase Program, he promised transparency. After all, with TARP, there is a very real potential of bankrupting the Treasury. Today, Bloomberg reports that Paulson and his robber Baron friends are giving away $7.7 trillion in credit and, get this, he isn't telling Congress who is getting the money!

This money could pay off half of every mortgage in America. Or it could provide free healthcare for every American. Think about what a relief that would be for American companies especially the automotive industry whose Union workers get full coverage. Or it could provide free education or best yet...it could stay in the Treasury and we could stop risking national insolvency.

I just quizzed my son for an exam last week. How did the British gain control of Egypt? My son replied, "By force, they invaded." No. Egypt borrowed too much money for building the Suez Canal and the British ended up own a majority share in the country!

Citigroup

2008-11-26T09:10:00.002-10:00

This bailout sucks...sucks our hard earned money that could be going into infrastructure and education, pouring it into people's hands that squander money on vaporfare.

Why can't the politicians see the simplicity of Paulson's scam

For example- answer me this...

Why have we've pumped in $45 billion into Citigroup which two days ago was only worth $35 billion on the market when we could have just bought the whole thing for less?

Does Obama read Cannibal Planet?

2008-10-14T16:12:00.003-10:00

“I am concerned that the way that they structure this new mechanism that we are cracking down on excessive CEO pay –- that I think should be part of the deal,” Mr. Obama said

That's playing pretty coy with the issue, but at least the issue is seeing some light.

Barack, I hope I can cal you Barack. After all, my first son is Ra'am and we were going to name our second Barack, but he didn't act like a Barack.

Barak, how's about taxing gross pay above $1 million. Gross pay, because there are too many loop holes that well paid CPAs can exploit to make the largest gross pay net next to nothing. This should be a progressive tax that, in effect, limits a person from making more than 100 times the minimum wage. If they want to make more money than that, they should think about improving the overall economic situation so that the minimum wage can rise.

Also, any company that is in bankruptcy should freeze all executive pay and benefits that are above $100k. I think it is ridiculous that these CEOs, mentioned a plenty in this blog, continue to pay themselves multimillion dollar compensations when there companies are nose diving!

So, Barack, you have room for me in your Cabinet?

It is not the end of everything

2008-10-04T07:58:00.005-10:00

The House signed the gazillion dollar bailout into law.

It is not the end.
We are in the middle.
The middle of the eradication of the middle class.
The middle of the creation of a class of debt slaves.
People who will spend their whole lives in debt.
Indebtured servants to the new class of wealth.

We are in the middle of creating a whole new definition of elite. In the past, kings and queens were satisfied to build castles on mountains to look upon their kingdoms. Our new billionaire class are sending rockets into space with the goal of building palaces on the moon and in orbit for those of their billionaire peers to look down on us all.

Down onto our warming planet.
Down onto our blue green planet
turning brown with deserts and airborne haze.

It is never too late to wake up to this,
but someday soon, it will be too late for changing it...you'll know what it is when you wake up.

Idiots Rule!

2008-10-01T21:53:00.006-10:00

The Senate did what!?!?!?

Start this mantra:

There is no financial crisis. The rich have the money they are just trying to get more.

Keep chanting it until you have enlightenment.

During Reagan, unemployment went past the 10% for almost 6 months. The week? 6.1%

In 1982, there were 13 billionaires in the United States. Now, there are over 500 billionaires.

Two years ago the U.S. imported about $185 billion a month in Goods and Service and exported only $120 billion.
Last month? The U.S. imported about $230 billion in G&S and exported almost $170 billion.

That means we are buying more stuff and making more money to buy it with...as a country.

If you're not feeling your wallet getting thicker, somebody must be pocketing that extra cash.

People like Paulson who has convinced the Senate to give the rich even more money. Now, call, write, e-mail your Reps. Don't let the House pass this bill!!!!

Bailout fails!!!

2008-09-29T08:35:00.003-10:00

Can we get a Hallelujah?

I hope you all looked closely at the votes. It is the Republicans who defeated this. The Democrats WANTED to had over the money with virtually no strings attached. But lo, not all Democrats voted for the bill. In a personal note to me Neil Abercrombie wrote: "I will not vote to bail out people who committed massive fraud on the American public." My sentiment exactly! But overall, when the Republicans shoot down a chance for their rich buddies to get richer, you know it must be flawed. Leaves you wondering how sheepish the Democratic establishment has become? They Republican establishment was obviously following their President's whim. It is only the rank-and-file representatives (ie people like you and me) that defeated the bill.

Everybody keep on their reps to kill this once and for all because they are planning a re-vote.

Paulson, unwittingly shows off the absurdity of the plan and its dark unpinnings:

One of the more contentious issues was how to limit the pay of executives whose firms seek government aid, a top priority for Democrats and even some Republican lawmakers. But it was a concern for Mr. Paulson, who worried about discouraging firms from participating in the rescue plan

So, if an executive can't make oodles of money off the bailout, they might not want their struggling companies to participate?

Paulson knows these folks since he was the CEO of the on-the-way-to-be-screwed Goldman Sachs. He is personally worth over a half a billion dollars himself! They don't care about America's economic well being, just amassing more personal wealth.

If Paulson thinks it is so important, why doesn't he convince a couple hundred of his best buddies to bailout Wall Street. They have the billions they ripped from the heart of working America.

But that would be too risky for them, but for some reason it is good enough for the rest of the hundreds of millions of Americans?

Goldman Sachs. Maybe a little top heavy?

2008-09-22T12:27:00.006-10:00

So, the magicians of Wall Street have cast a spell on the Feds who are casting spells on the American public.

I say....WAKE UP!

Goldman Sachs has 21 top executives and hundreds of managers. These folks all take home millions each year and we, the American public, are supposed to help them?

Lloyd Blankfein is CEO. His compensation package was worth over $115 million last year.

You feeling a tug on your heart strings to help this guy and his little business out?

No, maybe the fact that Gary Cohn and Jon Winkelried (Goldman's two COOs) compensation are under $120 million each?

Or the suffering of David Viniar whose cash compensation and stock options in 2007 only totaled $80 million?

Oh, the humanity! These people do need our help.

Why doesn't our government give these CEO's a personal loan with their personal wealth as collateral? You know why? Because these CEO know that personally they are not worth betting their own wealth on. So why should we?

So, $700 billion...Could buy a whole bunch of new high schools, hospitals, fund tons of students loans (that are a good investment), and save social security. Or not get another $700 billion into debt is probably the best idea for our country.

Please forward this page to your representatives in D.C.

GoldmanSachs and Morgan Stanley are having a wee bit of a problem

2008-09-21T21:14:00.003-10:00

I'm technically on hiatus, but this news bite was too sweet to pass up:

"Morgan Stanley has taken $15.7 billion of writedowns and losses on mortgage-related securities and other types of loans since the credit crunch started last year. Goldman's tally stands at about $4.9 billion... their revenue from sales and trading and investment banking have been declining this year...Goldman, in particular, has been remarkable for the high bonuses it pays to its employees. Goldman's CEO and two co- presidents were each paid more than $67 million last year."

Failing up. Kind of like going short?

Consumer confidence is down, but the rich go on vacation

2008-07-16T09:44:00.004-10:00

Another indicator that the economy is getting eaten by the rich is that vacation travel has not slumped among the wealthiest Americans.

At a country club outside of Portland, about 150 people spent part of a recent sunny day indoors at a "Luxury Explorers' Showcase" to learn about African safaris, tours of the Amazon and Galapagos, private jet charters and even space tourism.

Organizer Pamela Hurley-Moser said not all of the attendees were loaded with money, but all had one thing in common: They had no intention of canceling travel.

Hey Pamela, a country club membership means you have disposable income.

TCS Expeditions, which offers tours via private jets, is sold out for 2008 and nearly sold out for 2009 even though the standard price for trips like "Wildlife of the World" and "History's Lost Cities" is $64,950 per person, said Melanie Cole, vice president of sales in Seattle.

If you are feeling down, get out that People Magazine and live vicariously through people who can still have those luxuries. Either that or start demanding equal pay for equal work.

Doesn't it say something about this day and age when a pop song, like this one by Good Charlotte, can have a diatribe against the rich.

Unequal America?

2008-07-07T12:14:00.003-10:00

When we talk of a cannibal planet, we are speaking of how those with power and money use it to consume the lives of those less fortunate. This is happening at an ever increasing pace. The gap between rich and poor is not just one of means, but of life itself. Think I'm some anarchist extremist? Well, you might be right...but then again Havard Magazine just summarized a few studies that back me up:

Disparities in health tend to fall along income lines everywhere: the poor generally get sicker and die sooner than the rich. But in the United States, the gap between the rich and the poor is far wider than in most other developed democracies, and it is getting wider.

It goes on to show that societies that tax the rich more heavily and basically share the wealth more evenly have higher life expectancy across the board.

So, the extreme rich in our country are actually sucking the life out of the rest of us. Maybe Vampire Planet is more fitting?

Maybe we need a vampire hunter?

If you are an anime fan, this movie "Blood: The Last Vampire" is an absolute must have.

Time to spill some hot coffee

2008-07-01T18:40:00.003-10:00

" Starbucks Corp. will close 600 U.S. coffee shops and eliminate as many as 12,000 jobs, the most in its history, as Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz slows the chain's expansion after it doubled in size in four years."

How hard is it to run a franchise that marks up the cost of its product by 1000-2000%? Add in the fact that your customers are addicts and to top it off what you are doing is legal. How hard can that be?

Easy, unless you've got your arm up to your elbow in the till.

The company blames slower sales because the economic downturn and yet, they haven't looked at their executive pay as a place to regain competitiveness. Instead, they close stores and cut jobs which will, in effect, hurt their long term financial health.

Though I'm no fan of corporate coffee, my wife and kids love the drive-through pick-me-up stimulant and sugar experience. So, I'll save these baristas their jobs on the condition they take this info and hold their management accountable. Let's look at the FP (financial packages) of some of the folks in charge:
James Alling $12 million
Martin Coles $7.2 million
David Pace $11 million

and the coffee daddy Howard Shultz $472 million

Since Howie is just a man, let's strip his worth down to a man's level. We will leave him with $2 million. The average barista makes about $8/hr. We liquidate Howie's FP (except the $2 million) and that gives us 58,750,000 counter person hours of fine service to the caffiene junkie patronage. That's more than enough cash to keep those 12,000 baristas on the job for more than 2 more years. The economy might turn around by then or a new additive maybe allowed to make the coffee even more important to the clientele.

Barista's unite and raid the corporate kitty!

Then you could even take your coffee in bed.

The Rich Get RIcher, the Poor Get Eaten Part 2

2008-06-24T13:00:00.002-10:00

Today the AP reported that "The number of people around the world with at least $1 million in assets passed 10 million for the first time last year, according to a new report. And their bank accounts are growing even faster."

All you people bemoaning the end of the global economy must be wrong. On the other hand, the subset who are bemoaning the end of civilization are correct.

"The rarefied group of the superrich — those with at least $30 million in assets — got richer, too. There were 103,000 of them around the world last year, 9 percent more than the year before, and their wealth grew by nearly 15 percent."

So, their wealth grew by 15% in one year. Let's look at the average Joe.

Hey, Joe. Tell me about yourself.

I live in the U.S. and my real name is Median Household Income.

So, how are you doing?

Well, in 1965 I was making about $30k a year. By 2005, that grew to $45k.

Over forty years, you gained about $15k. That's about 1% a year.

Doesn't see like much when you put in in those terms.

I hate to be discouraging, but the average inflation rate over that same period of time is 4% a year.

Meaning?

You've lost a bundle.

So, the richest folks worldwide gain 10% a year. In the U.S., the country which touts its self as giving equal rights for all, the average Joe (thanks Joe), loses 3% every year against inflation. Joe loves to cruise in his car. In 1965, gas was around 35 cents a gallon and Joe was earning about $100 a day. Today Joe earns $180 a day, but a gallon of gas is around $4.

The more you know...

United Airlines Cuts over 900 jobs

2008-06-23T12:24:00.003-10:00

I guess this would be Part Two of the on going saga of maintaining insanely high CEO pay while laying off the people that actually make the company work. (see Part One here)

``We must take the difficult but necessary step to reduce the number of people we have to run our operation,'' said United Airlines spokeswoman Megan McCarthy.

A play on words. They are not reducing the number of people running the operation (CEOs, COOs, CFOs) thereby reducing their combined salaries and benefits which cost the company over $100 million each year. They are reducing their capacity to serve. This will ultimately reduce their revenue more and so begins the downward spiral while the execs continue to draw absurd amounts of money from the shrinking revenue stream.

Why does anybody buy this?

Here's Bill Moyers on the subject:

The score is in: CEOs make more money as the rest of bite the bullet

2008-06-17T07:48:00.004-10:00

The Associate Press has followed our lead and has begun investigating CEO pay and, like this blog, assembling the numbers. Here are the articles:

AP IMPACT: CEO pay chugs up in '07 despite economy

They must be reading this blog because they went for the specific thing I've been doing. Calling our CEOs of companies in decline:

Fixer-up: New CEOs at troubled companies earn top pay in '07

And lists like here:

List of highest-paid CEOs in 2007

Some of the "highlights":

The AP review of compensation for the heads of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index finds the median pay package added up to nearly $8.4 million.

At the top of the AP list: John Thain, who took the reins of Merrill Lynch on Dec. 1, 2007. His $83 million pay package was supercharged by a signing bonus and other enticements that lured him from the New York Stock Exchange to lead the investment bank as it was suffering its worst-ever losses.

FYI from Cannibal Planet, ole Johnny Boy has taken Merrill Lynch from a high of $62/share when he took the helm of company to $38/share today. Nice pay for shoddy work.

The AP even took snippets from my report on GM! You can read my more extensive report here.

But I like this little tidbit I hadn't found:

AP analysis found that CEO pay rose and fell regardless of the direction of a company's stock price or profits.

Take KB Home, battered by the subprime lending crisis and the weak housing market. According to the Los Angeles-based homebuilder's proxy statement, CEO Jeffrey Mezger is entitled to a cash bonus based on a percentage of KB's profit.

The problem was there was no profit. KB Home lost almost $930 million in 2007 and its stock lost 60 percent of its value. But Mezger still made $24.4 million, as valued by the AP, including a $6 million cash bonus.

Some good reporting by AP. I hope the masses notice that there's something going on here.

It's a theme party...no taxes

2008-06-12T19:10:00.003-10:00

Sticking with the idea that many of the wealthiest Americans don't pay their share or really support our country at all:

We have an article from the least likely of investigative sources USA Today.

"Death is inevitable, but federal income taxes aren't for an increased number of high-income earners.

New IRS statistics show 7,389 federal tax returns with $200,000 or more in adjusted gross income reported no federal income taxes in 2005."

Note this data is old, but given that I pulled this from USA Today, I'm surprised they are reporting on this action of cannibalistic capitalism at all.

Read my oil slick, no new taxes

2008-06-10T20:22:00.002-10:00

Oil company executives have been citing that petroleum companies have some of the lowest profit margins of any industry. Exxon Mobil's spokesman said that "proposals to increase taxes on the industry would discourage the sustained investments needed to safeguard U.S. energy security and are not in the interests of American consumers".

I think the interests of the American consumer is simple - cheaper oil.

So let's look at the Exxon Mobil 2007 profit margin and see if we can squeeze some extra oil from the fat:
H R Cramer Vice President $8.4 million
M E Foster Vice President $13.5 million
D D Humphreys Treasurer/CFO $9.1 million
S J Palmisano CEO $46.6 million
R W Tillerson CEO $26.5 million

You thought I was going to look at company profits? Not after economist and oil industry cheerleader Daniel North pointed out that "Exxon Mobil and other companies are not nameless entities ... they employ lots of people"

And, I might add, the people at the top have big appetites.

What shall we do now?

No recession, but wait, we are all stars

2008-06-06T09:25:00.005-10:00

Today the Treasury Department announced that the US is not in a recession.

'I don't think we're in a recession and the data suggests that we're not,' Treasury Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy Phillip Swagel said in a press briefing today.

The GDP continues to grow, investment and orders for goods continues to expand. Retail sales are positive.

Why are so many people being laid off? Why are wages for most Americans stagnated or decreasing against rising costs?

It is simple. The rich are getting richer. With paring down the workforce, lowering wages and increasing the workload on the remaining employees, management can carve a bigger piece of the pie for themselves.

We are not in a recession. So, go "celebrate" the "good" news.

Remember, we're all stars now in the dope show.

When will the air travel unions wake up?

2008-06-05T08:12:00.005-10:00

The bell is tolling for thee
airline employee.

This is going to be quick. Not because it is without great merit, but because I have to work for a living.

" Continental Airlines Inc. will cut 3,000 jobs and slash its jet fleet by 18 percent, becoming the fourth big U.S. carrier to shrink operations because of soaring fuel prices."

What's new? With airline companies going bankrupt and many others cutting their routes (read employees), why not Continental?

Hmmm. Why not? Maybe because they might be more profitable if their executives did not take such absurd salaries. I posted about the former CEO Gordon Bethune who took a lump sum payment of $22 million in 2004 while driving the stock price from $17/share to $9/share.
It didn't end with Gordie. Just for a taste:
Mr James E Compton, Divisional Executive VP $4.3 million
Lawrence W Kellner , CEO/Chairman $9.1 million
Henry L Meyer III, President/Director $18.3 million
Mr Jeffrey J Misner, Executive VP/CFO $4.7 million
Mark J Moran, Divisional Executive VP $4.5 million
Oscar Munoz, Executive VP/CFO $7.9 million
Jeffery A Smisek, President/Director $7.9 million

There are many more in Continental making millions while the company struggles. Way too many for a company about to end thousands of living wage jobs. Ruining thousands of lives and driving the over all economy down further.

That's my real beef. Living wage jobs do the most to stimulate our economy. A large middle class creates a stable system. We spend a larger percentage of our income while these multimillionaires just find ways to make more money off their money. Which means they are expecting someone else to do the work of earning them money. Can you say slave class on the horizon? That's where we are headed.

By consolidating more and more of the countries wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, less cars get bought (notice all the auto plant closures), less travel happens (notice the airlines folding), consumer index goes down...need I go on?

Union leaders wake up! There are cannibals about and they need to be stopped!

They can tell the media that it is the rising oil prices, but we already pointed out that the oil companies are taking us for a ride. Our alternative power system could be already providing us with the power we need if we hadn't subsidized oil and nuclear for so long.

I'm not saying people in administrative roles shouldn't be compensated, but they shouldn't make 1000 times what their base workforce earns AND they definitely shouldn't make these obscene amounts when they fail to make the company profitable!

That feeling in your backside is not an impending massage. If it is not hurting now, just wait till the end of the lubricating effects of the oil.

United Airlines Cuts over 1400 jobs

2008-06-04T07:55:00.006-10:00

Remember Glenn "I make $10 million a year for screwing up" Titlon? Today that CEO together with COO John "I make $5 million a year for screwing up" Tague called his employees with the bad news. Oooo, a personal call. Trying to make the whole cannibal experience seem more humane.

John: "Thanks, Glenn. Earlier this year, we laid out a five-point plan aimed at building a United fit to win in today’s reality."

I bet this doesn't involve cutting their salaries!

1. "New sources of revenue" like charging for that second bag. That makes me want to fly more, not!
2. "Reducing capacity". Do you here that sucking sound?
3. "Retire old aircraft". Sounds good on the surface, but it limits there one profitable division: International travel.
4. "Elimination of Ted product." Isn't that their economy division?
5. "Reducing our workforce." i.e. screw yall while we still take home the bank.

Full text here. (need NYT login)

Like the dilemma with GM, we can solve this another way and provide better service. After all, the airlines are not a place for executives to just pad their pockets. Let's cut some of the least profitable routes, but keep all the employees so the quality of service goes up. More employees per customer usually equates to quicker, friendlier service. Friendlier because the workforce is not overstretched as it has been.

I can hear Glenn and his BFF John saying, "but where, oh where will the money come from?"

Well, their are 21 top executives making millions with tens of millions in stock options, like:
Frederic F Brace, Executive VP/CFO $4.9 million a year
Paul R Lovejoy, Senior VP $2.4 million a year
Rosemary Moore, Senior VP $2.4 million a year

With Cannibal Planet math, we let this misguided execs still take home $250k and keep their options. The rest rolls in to the salaries for the workforce they so readily wanted to fire.

That's almost $100 million a year. Wow! That is almost exactly the amount they need to keep 2000 people on the workforce at a living wage!

Hold it, that means UAL could actually help turn this nation's economy around by hiring 400 people, providing better service, thereby improving the brand, and maybe, just maybe my bags will arrive with me this time.

Maybe the workforce will hire me as a consultant?

Hey yall, Crash into Me, for all those UAL employees

Monster Trucks Shut Down!

2008-06-03T08:10:00.004-10:00

Today GM announced the closing of four truck plants. They are considering ending production on the Hummer line of vehicle. GM CEO Rick Wagoner, cites that gasoline going above $4 a gallon represents ``a structural change, not just a cyclical change.'' Is this guy brilliant? I mean do you make vehicles just because people might buy them? Or do you look at the global economic situation?

Almost every country on the planet is full of super efficient small vehicles. Even the trucks are micro-sized, but for some feat of stupidity, CEO's of American car companies continued to make monster sized trucks with lower and lower efficiency until their Rosemary's Baby, the Hummer, was born. For me, this is akin to selling crack or heroin. People will buy it, but is it good for them?

Well, the dope dealer just got busted by Officer Reality.
The plant closings will mean the loss of almost 8,000 jobs.

But I know Cannibal Planet dwellers are really interested in Rick Wagoner's situation.
How many babies does this guy eat for breakfast while mismanaging one of the bedrock industries of America? What does he get for failing to show a profit for four years and driving the stock price down from $54/share in 2004 to $17 today?

$14,415,914

That's each year. So over the four years of driving a losing Hummer to the car lot of oblivion, he made $50 million. Fully a criminal cannibal.

In Cannibal Planet style, let's save these 8,000 jobs.
Can we do it?
Yes we can!

Every company has a bunch of executives that are paid way too much money. GM is no different. Here are some of their annual compensations:
Gary Cowger DVP $5 million
Fred Hendersen COO $7.6 million
Robert Lutz DVC $6.9 million
Thomas Stephens EVP $4.9 million

There are twenty of these guys and two gals making an average of $6 million a year. More if you go down the feed chain, but let's stay at the top.

Along with the Rick's pick, that's $146 million per year. Let's par that down to a more humane, and representative of their poor work, $250k per year. That leaves over $14o million. Over the 4 years of poor performance that is $560 million. Could a half a billion dollars be enough to transition these 8,000 workers into GM jobs making micro and electric cars? I think so. Regardless, saving $140 million a year could save over 2000 living wage jobs.

Can I get my consulting fee now?

BTW Hummer's suck. Notice the Jeep passing the Hummer in the second shot.

Oil Company CEOs hit hard by the economy

2008-06-02T17:59:00.003-10:00

Yeah, they are hit hard by the amount of money they are hauling home. They need to design a bigger Hummer with a trailer to fit all their cash.

The five year salaries of the top 30 Oil Executives totals $2,250 million. That is more than 20,000 average American citizens.

You think that might be criminal in the face of the job and economic situation we are in?

Wait. There is more.

The oil stock these 30 dudes (Yes, they are all dudes. I checked.) is worth $5,737 million (I could write it in billions, but it loses the drama).

Let's do some Cannibal Planet math. If we waved the magic wand of nationalizing oil wealth of only these 30 guys, we could do an Oprah, but with solar panels. Remember, this is just the oil stock holdings of 30 guys. Not their 3-5 houses, their money market portfolios, hedge funds, other real estate holdings, nor their pure bred Arabian Horses. Just the oil stock turned over to all Americans.

With that money, my buddy Tom could put enough panels on roofs to power 230,000 households.

Talk about a quick road to energy independence!

For scoring low, you still get to fly high

2008-06-01T17:03:00.010-10:00

For the exclusive club of airline CEOs, performance has nothing to do with pay. First off, all these guys qualify as cannibals because they take home over a million in salary, bonuses, and exercised options EACH YEAR. What I'd like to summarize here is the performance from these high flying fancy boys versus how much they wrangle in all compensation including options not yet exercised.

The score card:

US Airways. CEO Douglas Parker $26 million in 2007
Stock price fell from $61/share in May 2007 to a virtual backruptcy of $4/share today.

Continental Airlines. CEO Gordon Bethune $22 million in 2004
under his helm stock price fell from $17/share in January 2004 to $9/share in January 2005

United Airlines. CEO Glenn Tilton $10 million in 2007
Stock price fell from $50/share in January 2007 to $7/share today.

Skywest. CEO Jerry C. Atkin $9.9 million in 2007
Stock price fell from $28/share in January 2007 to $15/share today.

American Airlines. CEO Gerard Arpey $7.9 million in 2007
Stock price fell from $40/share in January 2007 to $13/share in January 2008

JetBlue. CEO David Barger $5.2 million in 2007
Stock price fell from $17/share in January 2007 to under $4/share today.

Mesa Airlines. CEO Jonathan G Ornstein $4.1 million in 2007
Stock price fell from $8/share in January 2007 to a virtual backruptcy of $.72/share today. (that's 72 cents!)

Delta Airlines. CEO Richard Anderson $3.3 million in 2007
Stock price fell from $21/share in April 2007 to a virtual backruptcy of $6/share today.

Southwest. CEO Gary C. Kelly $3.1 million in 2007
Stock price nudged down from $16/share in January 2007 to $13/share today.

Northwest Airlines. CEO Douglas M. Steenland $2.6 million in 2007
Stock price fell from $26/share in May 2007 to a virtual backruptcy of $7/share today.

Because Mesa (via Go! Airlines) wiped out Aloha, Hawaiian is gaining because of little, and soon no, competition:

Hawaiian Airlines. CEO Mark B. Dunkerley $2.7 million in 2007
Stock PRICES GAINED from $3/share in March of 2007 to $7/share today.

You can say these guys are doing the best they can in a downturning economy, but do they really have to make these obscene amounts of money while they drive their companies off the cliff?

Each one of these personal payouts could be downsized and save not dozens, but hundreds, and in the case of some, thousands of living wage jobs.

Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest, is one of the lowest compensated in the bunch and has made some of the smartest decisions, like getting a fixed price on aircraft fuel for the next couple of years.

On the other hand, Douggie Parker of US Airways, made truly the worst decisions in the industry, and received the highest compensation.

Sooooo...bigger compensation does not equal better performance....laid out clearly here on Cannibal Planet.

Crash and burn baby.

Billionaires' woes

2008-05-27T15:41:00.007-10:00

As UBS continues to tumble from its high last year in the mid-60s, the top executives have revealed that they received only their base pay with no performance based bonuses. (Isn't this how it is supposed to work?) They have been on a PR campaign to show that they are conscious of the hard times and doing their part to tighten spending. This has not stopped them from scoring the largest quarterly loss of any bank out there at $11.3 billion. They expect to top that this quarter at somewhere around $15 billion.

Still, Marcel Ospel cut his pay by 90%! That should mean something? Maybe he's not a cannibal?

Not likely. He still took home over $2.6 million to add to his personal wealth of $2 billion.

That's like you and me (average home owners) earning less than $500 for a whole year of work, right? Isn't that how the math works?

Unrelated? Al Franken's Supply Side Jesus

Another nose dive

2008-05-23T08:13:00.004-10:00

You could simply blame it on the oil executives who are hell bent on making their billions grow, but the rash of airline bankruptcies points to something simpler - ego.

Take Jonathan G Ornstein of Mesa Airlines. Mesa today announced that a budget shortfall might send the company into bankruptcy. Well, he did give away practically free airline tickets in Hawaii to drive the 60 year old Aloha Airlines out of business. He operated in the red and 'couldn't possibly be aware of the looming rise in oil prices'. Many of his employees posted on blogs that he was the worst person to work for and this whole run up against Aloha Airlines was a bad idea. So, the average airline support person has more sense than the CEO (Where do they find these CEOs? In caves?) But wait maybe he did see this coming.

In 2007, he exercised $2.8 million of his stock options out of a total of $3.3 million. Any more that the 2.8 and the SEC might be doing some investigating, eh?

But Jonny Boy wasn't the only one to take the money and run while making poor decisions for Mesa. Michael J. Lotz, President and Chief Operating Officer cashed in on $2.2 million out of his $2.8 total. Brian S. Gillman, Executive Vice President, converted $680k out of $760k total (i.e. 90%). So I guess everyone knew there were some bad decisions being made and the time to get their money out was last year (while driving Aloha out of business and putting almost 1000 lifelong Aloha employees out of a job).

Now, Mesa sees the writing on the wall, but the CEOs and prezzies made off with their millions. Mesa employees will now have to complete with ex-Aloha employees for the diminishing job opps.

Now tell me why these CEOs and executives deserve compensation 100 times as much as their average employee?

Ford Scraps profit, but not CEOs high pay

2008-05-22T07:36:00.005-10:00

This should be the title of the current news items. CEO Alan Mulally hasn't ever shown a profit for Ford and its shareholders. He has "trimmed the workforce" (read: ruined the lives of thousands of autoworkers), but he has failed to show a gain for the company. Their market share has fallen and they have lost a lot of capacity by selling off different divisions. Mulally announced today that they aren't even going to try to show profitability until AFTER 2009!

Now lets look at some numbers. Mulally's compensation in 2006 and 2007 together total $50 million. In the same period CFO Don LeClair received about $20 million, Americas division president Mark Fields $15 million, Lewis Booth, the top European-based executive $17 million, Michael Bannister, head of Ford Motor Credit Co., $12 million.

Let's use our example of luxury as defined by living at the Four Seasons Hotel and eating meals by the pool and receiving a massage every day. Price? $400,000 if you get a suite. So we trim these CFUs compensation to $500,000 each because these are tight times, right? Aren't they?

That leaves $112 million. That's over two thousand autoworkers' jobs. These are living wage jobs. People who would keep stimulating our economy. Five men make more income than two thousand of their hard working employees.

It is no wonder Japan is kicking our collective asses and they are giving big bonuses to their auto workers!

Maybe it is because the Toyota executives are still human. They haven't turned into cannibals like their American counter parts. The proof? All 32 top execs at Toyota (one of the most profitable automakers on the planet) make under $20 million combined. That includes company President Katsuaki Watanabe's compensation. That's an average of $625,000 each. They can still stay at the Four Seasons Hotel, their company is hugely successful, and they don't turn into cannibals.

No one know what its like?

Marketing Geniuses

2008-05-21T22:43:00.003-10:00

I put on AdSense. They said they'd put ads that were appropriate with the content posted. I had no idea they'd be so literal.

The Internet. Truly something for everyone.

Who knew?

It's going to get worse

2008-05-21T13:29:00.004-10:00

To Gerard and all the other CEOs of airlines: Its going to get worse - a lot worse.

Oil is going to keep going up until people consume less oil. I doubt that is going to happen before oil reaches $150 a barrel. Which might happen this summer. I'd put money down that it'll happen by the time winter heating oil becomes an issue. Doubting me? I know you read Bloomberg, but read beyond the title page and ads for new yachts. Margot Habiby has great analysis.

So, start your restructuring plans that are based on preserving as many jobs as possible. This includes paring down those obscene salaries of higher management. Hint: look closely at anybody making over a half a million. I bet they can make due with less. If half the world can live on less than $2 a day, I think these CEOs can figure out how to survive on half a million dollars.

What's more American than cutting jobs to retain your high salary?

2008-05-21T13:08:00.003-10:00

American Airlines. AMR did a nose dive today and CEO Gerard Arpey announced there might be thousands of employees laid off. The reason? He didn't have the foresight to see that oil would rise so much in price. So, why do these companies pay these CEOs so much money if they can't see what the rest of us have foretold in so many places for free?

I'll say it again. No compensation package necessary "Oil is a finite resource and its end is in sight."

So, Gerry received a 20% raise last year to $6.6 million and his deep solution at present crisis? Cut thousands from his payroll.

That's thousands of people Gerry.

People.

What drives the economy down faster than any other element? More unemployed and people failing to make a living wage. If you don't know what a living wage is google it. Last I checked it was around $17/hr. The airline industry is dominated by living wage jobs. The further the economy goes down, the less people will travel. The less they travel....do I have to spell it out?

If Gerry cuts his salary to a more humane half a million (he can still stay at the Four Seasons Hotel for that and drive his Beemer), he can keep over 100 flight attendants. But I bet he'll keep his salary and trash those 100 lives.

Why do CEOs cut jobs instead of their absurdly high compensation packages?

You tell me.

I've seen the writing on the wall

2008-05-13T14:07:00.005-10:00

If a person has a good job, they tend to work hard. I've seen a man with determination and drive do the work of ten men. I've even seen a smart and agile woman do the work of fifty men, but I've never seen anybody do the work of a hundred people.

Unfortunately, something in our society's consciousness has gone awry and there are thousands of CEOs, CFOs, and CFUs walking around thinking they are entitled to compensation equal to a hundreds, even thousands, of people.

Everybody knows about the Waltons who pay the average worker at WalMart about $8/hr ($12,500/yr). You probably know that Waltons are multibillionaires with a combined family wealth of over $65 billion, but did you know that WalMart CEO Lee Scott received $31.6 million in compensation in 2007 alone. To use the axiom above, he received more than 2750 of his lowest paid employees combined.

Eat or be eaten?

Now, if you paid Lee Scott only a million dollars a year, limited the Waltons' incomes to a million dollars a year, and spread that money among all the 600,000 employees of WalMart nationwide you'd have a serious economic incentive package. Not the piddly little check Bush sent out. These more than a half a million peoples' wages would more than double from the sacrifice of just a few individuals!

How rich do people need to be?

Another one bites the...

2008-05-12T17:10:00.006-10:00

California, the land of gold: Golden Sunsets, Gold Rushes, the Golden Gate Bridge -
where many of the richest people in America live -
people like Michael Perry, CEO of IndyMac.

The poor shareholders of IndyMac watched today as their stock plummeted when the company announced its $184 million in losses for this quarter alone and it doesn't expect to show a profit this year at all.

Last year's net loss was $615 million.

Mike P. decided to cancel his stock options and offer them to his employees.

Lovely. The multigazillionaire is offering his workforce shares in a company that might not be worth anything next year. BTW Mike's pilfering in the form of salary and exercised stock options over the last 5 years? $42.23 million.

Let's put this in perspective. The average high school teacher in my town makes about $48k a year in one of the most important professions for the growth and improvement of our country. Over five years that's $240k (note - all of that is spent just to scrape by). There are about 40 teachers at my local high school.

Mr. "I can't help that I f*cked up and screwed up my company" Perry makes four times as much as all the teachers at the high school put together.

Ya think he's worth it? He thinks so.

If you think so, I've got a piece of land for you!

Calling it like we see it.

2008-05-11T19:51:00.004-10:00

Donna's mom is, in general, not very cogent.

In fact, she often seems to be living on a separate planet and communicating in a foreign language.

Recently, she was watching a television program and there were oil company CEOs trying to justify their huge salaries in the face of our high oil prices and declining economy.

In framing her reaction she becomes the most lucid of all people in our country:

"Of all the things in my life I have seen on television,
this is the most obscene."

Indeed.

Fannie's in flames, CEO Mudd gets the goods

2008-05-06T19:32:00.004-10:00

In 2007, Fannie Mae's CEO Daniel Mudd was at the helm while bad decision followed bad decision. This time last year FNM hovered around 60 dollars a share. Today it barely creeped over 30 dollars. Danny Boy said they were going hunting for more capital. The masses bought his bait and bumped it almost 9%. DM (not to be confused with Dungeon Master) took home almost $12 million during this spiral into the abyss and the dude is only 48 years old! Back in 2005, Fannie Mae also reached around $60 per share. DM took that and drove it down to $50 share in 2006 while getting $14 million in compensation! Remember that Fannie Mae is a GSE (Government Sponsored Enterprise), so there is a good chance that if Daniel Mudd does an even worse job this year, the government will bail out the company. Talk about job security!

Here is a totally different Fannie Mae with my favorite bassist Jaco!

Oil Companies are getting so rich it's embarassing

2008-05-01T07:34:00.004-10:00

Exxon Mobil posted their first quarter profits today. Their income rose 17% - the second most profitable quarter it is history. Gosh, and with their costs going up to $120 a barrel that must mean they are screwing us more than ever. Even with those gains, the shareholders are pissed. They expected even more gains, so we can expect that Exxon will be screwing us much worse in the next quarter. They need to get serious gains by the end of summer to justifying cutting prices just before the election. Yes, they do do that.

Good luck yall. Hope you are shopping for solar panels and an electric car.

See, we can still have NASCAR without the oil companies!

How being a Dick makes you more money

2008-04-25T13:27:00.006-10:00

If you are a war-mongering Dick Cheney, then the more war you are mongering, the more money you make. At the end of 2003, the Dick family had netted $813,266 with only one war in full swing . By 2007, the Dickster's share of the war profiteering had grown to $2,528,068. Hmmm. Let's take a look at his portfolio: $10-25 million in the American Century International Bond, $10-25 million in the Vanguard Short term Fund, $10 million the Vanguard Inflation-Protection Securities Fund। Basically, he and his money managers are betting that the U.S. dollar will tank and our economy in general will go down the toilet. But like the CEOs in my other posts, as he drives the corporate country down with this war, neglecting national infrastructure needs, healthcare crisis, etc, the Dickster is rewarded for his bad decisions with an over 300% increase in income. Any of you see a 300% of personal income in the last 5 years?

The Rich Live Longer as The Poor Live Shorter Lives

2008-04-22T07:50:00.005-10:00

At Harvard's School of Public Health, the results are in. The rich are eating the poors' lives at an unprecidented rate:

"The results showed that, between 1961 and 1999, average life expectancy in the U.S. increased from 66.9 to 74.1 years for men and from 73.5 to 79.6 for women. Looking at individual counties, however, the researchers found that beginning in the 1980s, the best-off counties continued to improve but there was a stagnation or worsening of life expectancy in the worst-off counties--what the researchers refer to as “the reversal of fortunes.” As a result, while men in the best-off counties lived 9.0 years longer than those in the worst-off counties in 1983, by 1999 that gap had increased to 11.0 years; for women the 1983 life expectancy gap of 6.7 years increased to 7.5 years by 1999. Over the past few decades, life expectancy in high-income countries around the world has gradually risen, with few exceptions." (read more)

This gives the rich more time to amass and centralize the wealth into fewer hands and then pass it off to their offspring. The new oligarchy? Nope, same old monarchy. I'm always amazed that people don't realize that the ruling class in the U.S. is directly related to the kings and queens of Europe.

The Bush Family is related to Queen Elizabeth. "A majority of our Presidents have a direct connection to European royalty."

What might really blow your mind is that Obama is related to Bush!

Hillary is related to Madonna. Figures.

The Candidates: Commanders and Cannibals

2008-04-19T11:28:00.011-10:00

I think we have established that the rich eat the poor at least metaphorically. Unless you are Ted Turner, then it is literally the truth. Is there hope with the new election? Will we be moving from away from the uber-rich Bushies and their policies of making the rich richer while enslaving the poor? I doubt it.

If heaven and hell forbid, the Republicans win again, McCain will be protecting the family fortune worth over $100 million and not caring about whether you live or die. Of course the Clintons made more than that in the past 8 years and I doubt they'll be changing any laws that puts their "hard earned" money at risk.

The Obamas are small fry compared to the cannibals above with a net worth of about $2 million. Seemingly this is due to poor money management skills since they netted $2 million in 2005 alone.

So Obama isn't among the cannibals of America. He and his wife make about 10 times what the average American makes, but don't seem to be able to hold on to the money. This makes them wealthy, but not obscenely so. But are their poor money management skills good for America?

You might consider Ralph Nader who is worth a similar amount, but with better money management skills since he earns less than half of what Michelle and Barack earn.

Remember the reason we are at war in Iraq is about money. The big money made by war profiteering by rich people getting richer. Who will stop this war?

I report. You decide.

Rewarded for f!#cking up!

2008-04-13T23:17:00.004-10:00

I guess it is just par for the course in Bush's America that CEOs get big rewards even when they screw up major. Even with this knowledge of our current state as BizarroWorld(TM), it still messes with my mind. On the local Hawaii front we have CEO Clint Arnoldus (I'm not making this sh!t up), who lost millions for Central Pacific Bank and yet was handed $5 million upon leaving the company...this is over five times his last annual pay (2007). Mike Ruley (again, these names are real) lost millions for Hawaii Telecom and yet they gave him over a million bucks in bonuses when he was ousted. Besides this craziness is the simple fact that CEOs make too much money for anyone's good. In Hawaii, the average CEO make 29 times the median income. I'm sorry. No one works that much harder than anyone else. In fact, I'd say that some of the worst paid people on Earth, work much harder than most CEOs have ever worked.

The rich get bigger yachts...the poor get less food

2008-04-11T09:49:00.000-10:00

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said today, "While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs - and it's getting more and more difficult everyday." This is, in large, due to the rising price of fuel. Meanwhile, oil companies post record profits (Exxon shatters profit records). Zoellick is asking for $500 million to meet the poorest countries' emergency food needs. Well look no farther than the pay raises for Occidental Petroleum's Ray Irani ($500 million in the past 5 years) and XTO Energy's Bob Simpson ($215 million in 5 years). These two guys alone could bail out about a dozen countries and still have millions left over. Of course, their pay rising in the face of economic and food crisis is not an isolated incident. The average pay for CEOs rose 5% in 2007 to $11 million each! What do these fat cats do with their bundles of cash? Well, "as the economy slips, yacht sales skyrocket."

Yachts burn in Barcelona

Somehow strangely satisfying.

Global warming could lead to cannibalism

2008-04-08T21:59:00.000-10:00

Cannibal Planet was borne out of the reality that there are limited resources. Creating wealth is a misnomer. People are simply taking from someone else's share. As some cats get fat, the rest of the world starves. So the rich, in effect, eat the poor. Though he cannot see the effect in the present, Ted Turner, one of these fat cats, has seen the writing on the wall (or this blog) for the near future, but has taken the whole idea to the ultimate conclusion. "Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals". Of course, being a restauranteur, Teddy boy will be feeding the rest of us to his fat cat buddies. But maybe, maybe if we eat the rich now, we can avoid this catastrophe.

Joke lang.

Say Aloha to your Airline ticket money

2008-04-04T10:13:00.000-10:00

Bad news in paradise. Both Aloha Airlines and ATA went bankrupt in one week taking over a half million visitors away from the isle, but worse for us the companies stole our travel dollars. Thousands of people we left holding tickets that are now worthless like Kimberlie Gamino who flies in specialists for a camp for children with serious heart problems in Mokule'ia. She lost $9000. Or the people who raised thousands of dollars to fly Special Olympics contenders on Aloha Airlines like Carey Uchida who not only lost thousands of dollars in tickets, but hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles to be used for the Special Olympics. But the real victims in this corporate binge are the workers like Harry Shupe only 2 years away from retirement after a 38 year career at Aloha. At the head of the table is Aloha's CEO David Banmiller who during the bankruptcy hearings of 2005 was able to negotiate with the courts to allow him a multimillion dollar compensation package. You think that the courts will give Harry even a tenth of that? Or let him be eaten? Subodh Karnik, ATA's CEO, dodged out only weeks before the company went belly up, taking his chunk of salary with him and then John Denison who first got ATA in bad straights while making almost a half a million a year stepped back in and drove the stake through the heart. These guys are amateur airline cannibals compared to Glenn Tilton who collected over $8 million while driving United Airlines into bankruptcy. But the king cannibal of the air is Gordon Bethune, CEO of Continental Airlines, who took $22 million from the company on his way out while underfunding the company's pension fund by $1.58 billion

Material Prices go up, profit margin goes down...except if you are big Oil

2008-03-19T07:21:00.000-10:00

Imagine you are a farmer and the cost of your irrigation supplies went up. You would be imagining a tight year. You would be figuring on how to supplement your income with a side business of dried flower arrangements. You'd be brainstorming on how to keep the farm alive by taking less money for your family. These are logical processes in a real market economy...but Oil companies don't have to do this. With oil over $110 a barrel, the oil companies don't make their profit margin smaller, they just increase the price so they can make even more money! When you are standing at the pump know that some oil baron is padding his pocket thickly. Exxon posted record breaking profits in 2007. Exxon wasn't alone. While most Americans were thinking of ways of surviving "Mobile announced last year's net income at $40.6 billion, the largest ever for a publicly traded company." Shell is not an American company, but that didn't stop that company from turning the high cost of oil into top profits. Remember the masters of our disaster at the top of these companies are the top cannibals of the world. In 2007, when most Americans saw their debt go up and there retirement funds go either flatline or into the negative, CEO's like Marathon Oil's Clarence Cazalot saw his compensation rise by 53%! Rex Tillerson over at Exxon got a $20 million bonus on top of his $18.4 million salary. But these guys make chump change compared to Occidental Petroeum's CEO's Ray Irani's almost a half a billion dollar compensation package!

Really who needs this kind of money?

If you are a total junkie with a habit big enough to kill most mortals,

living at the Four Seasons Hotel in Phuket in a suite,

whoring every night while taking Viagra to counter effect the junk you are shooting,

and your yacht, with you captain and crew, waits at the harbor, just in case you want to get some sea air for your "health",

you still couldn't spend a tenth of what these guys are making.

So, why do these guys take this kind of money personally and for the corporation when it drives (no pun intended) so many people into poverty?

What kind of beings are these CEO creatures?

1 for you, 2 for me, none for you, three for me...

2008-03-18T20:37:00.000-10:00

...or so goes the logic of the CEOs of our nation.

Contemplate this as so many talk of recession:

"New York City securities industry firms paid out a total of $137 billion in employee bonuses from 2002 to 2007, according to figures compiled by the New York State Office of the Comptroller. Let's break that down: Wall Street honchos earned a bonus of $9.8 billion in 2002, $15.8 billion in 2003, $18.6 billion in 2004, $25.7 billion in 2005, $33.9 billion in 2006, and $33.2 billion in 2007."

Now the Feds (ie you and I...the taxpaying public) are bailing out the play toys of these fat cats and do these same big boys with their toys have to give back their allowances...no, of course not. The would be, would be....oh so, un-American.

It's just Money:

The richer get richer...the poor get eaten

2008-03-18T10:04:00.000-10:00

It has been called many things...War on Drugs, War on Terror, War on Teen Sex, but what it really all is part of is the age old...Class War. It is a War on the Living Wage, a War on Benefits, a War on Healthcare for All...and the list goes on. I decided to start this blog when Bear Stearns went out to auction.

Everybody says the economy is tanking. How is it tanking if the Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz pulled down $35 million in 2007 in salary and options from Bear Stearns alone?

Explain to me how the economy is tanking when the richest 1% of our country gained 23% in 2007 alone?

The economy is not tanking. The ruling class is taking it for a ride. You think JPMorgan Chase is worried about acquiring Bear Stearns at less than 10% of its net worth. (The actual office buildings Bear Stearns owns are worth many times what JPMorgan paid for ownership of all its operations).

When Chevron has an annual report that shows significant losses and Warren Buffett has to tighten his belt then the economy would be in a down turn. What is really happening is the economy is being played with...to the benefit of a very small percentage of our population…and they are doing very, very well….like Alan Schwartz.