Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Failure, Government, Privacy, Reason, Society, Terrorism, Violence
A friend sent me this Wall Street Journal article yesterday:
White House Czar Calls for End to ‘War on Drugs’
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.
In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation’s drug issues.
“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”
OK, that’s not the same thing as actually changing drug policy, but how you say something matters a lot. As Radly Balko says:
The drug war imagery started by Nixon, subdued by Carter, then ratcheted up again in the Reagan administration (and remaining basically level since) has had significant repercussions on the way drug policy is enforced, from policymakers on down to street-level cops. It’s war rhetoric that gave us the Pentagon giveaway program, where millions of pieces of surplus military equipment (such as tanks) have been transferred to local police departments. War imagery set the stage for the approximately 1,200 percent rise in the use of SWAT teams since the early 1980s, and has fostered the militaristic, “us vs. them” mentality too prevalent in too many police departments today.
War implies a threat so existential, so dire to our way of life, that we citizens should be ready to sign over some of our basic rights, be expected to make significant sacrifices, and endure collateral damage in order to defeat it. Preventing people from getting high has never represented that sort of threat.
The “War on (Some) Drugs” was never really about controlling drug abuse. It was about controlling people, particularly those people who could be easily demonized to give politicians a nice boost amongst their white, middle-class base. It helped to cement the allegiance of local pols and police departments, who got lots of new toys to play with at no cost (local cost, that is), and gave them more power. It eroded our civil rights and constitutional freedoms, and helped to set the stage for further intrusions when the “War on Terror” came along.
Getting rid of the “War” rhetoric doesn’t solve the problems with abuse of authority, but it does help to redefine the relationship a bit. It is a necessary first step in reclaiming some of our freedoms. Let’s hope that it is the first of many.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Bruce Schneier, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Government, Health, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Society, Survival, Terrorism, Violence
The annoying cold I mentioned the other day seems to be trying for an upgrade to bronchial infection, perhaps with delusions of becoming pneumonia. So I’m not feeling particularly creative or insightful. Maybe I used up too much outrage yesterday. Anyway, since I am a bit under the weather, let me just post an excerpt from something you ought to read. This is the closing of The Most Dangerous Person in the World?:
Security itself is an illusion. It is a perception that exists only between our ears. No army, insurance policy, hazmat team, video surveillance or explosive sniffer can protect us from our own immune system, a well-intentioned but clumsy surgeon, failing to look before crossing the street, an asteroid randomly hurtling through space or someone willing to die in order to do others harm.
In this sense, the only things that can truly make us more “secure” are not things. They are the courage to face whatever comes with dignity and intention, and the strong relationships that assure we will face the future together, and find comfort and meaning in doing so.
Imagine, then, what might happen if we simply quit listening to the scaremongers and those who profit from our paranoia. Imagine what the world could look like if we made a conscious choice to live out whatever time we have with courage, compassion, service and joy.
Terrorism is an act of the weak. But so is walking through the airport in our socks.
We can make better choices.
Go read the whole thing.
Jim Downey
(Via Bruce Schneier.)
In a letter to [Treasury Secretary] Geithner yesterday, Liddy agreed to restructure some of the payments. But Liddy said he had “grave concerns” about the impact on the firm’s ability to retain talented staff “if employees believe that their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury.”
Bwahahahaha!! *sniff* Hehehehehehe… Go on, pull the other one:
AIG officials say that some of the upcoming bonuses are relatively modest once they are divided among employees. About 4,700 people in the company’s global insurance units are receiving $600 million in retention pay. In addition, about $121 million in corporate bonuses will go to more than 6,400 people, for an average payout of about $19,000, according to AIG.
“These are not Wall Street bonuses,” said one AIG executive, who was not authorized to speak on the record. “This is an insurance company.”
Heh. Hehehehe.
>wipes eyes, catches breath<
Whew. Gods, I’m glad that those are not Wall Street bonuses. I mean, who in this economy can begrudge a mere average $19,000 bonus for the middle-managers there at AIG? Not to mention the average $127,000 retention pay to the upper management? I know if *I* didn’t get that kind of bonus annually, I’d just leave. I mean really.
Heh.
OK, in all seriousness, if these people have contracts stipulating these bonuses, without some kind of escape clause pertaining to the performance of the company, then it would probably cost us more in lawsuits for violating those contracts. Yeah, I said “us” – because we’re talking about AIG, which has received some $170 billion (and which as a result the US government owns 80% of). Does that make you feel better about the whole thing?
No, me neither.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Depression, Emergency, Failure, Government, NYT, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Survival
for another happy-happy Monday morning post about the economy! Yay! Everyone gather around, and let Uncle Jim tell you a story…
“We’re screwed.”
Did you like my story? Oh, you want details? If you insist.
No, I’m not going to talk about the Dow being down below 7,000 for the first time this century (it’s at 6,900 as I write). Nor about the news this morning of AIG’s additional $61.7 billion loss last quarter. Those are just symptoms.
To really understand what is happening, listen to this weekend’s episode of This American Life, part of which I touched on last Friday. It’ll help explain how and why the fundamental problem is a political one: no one really wants to face the prospect of doing what has to be done to clean up this mess, because it would mean too many powerful interests get burned. Rather, everyone – all the bankers, all the investors, the US and European and Japanese governments – is hoping beyond hope that they can finesse their way through this, and things will skate by on the thin ice and get better sometime, somehow.
Why do I say that? Because, as they said in the “Bad Bank” episode, nationalization of banking systems has been done before. In fact, it’s been done a lot of times. But usually in this or that small foreign country, and under the direction/demand of the IMF as a condition of aid. Nationalization means that the government steps in to protect the overall economy by forcing corrections in the banking system directly – that is, the government takes over (to some degree) the operation of the banks for a period of time. And this means that while the government involved usually has to assume some of the costs, that shareholders and investors take the worst hit. Oh, and the bankers who created the mess usually get tossed out if not tossed in prison. (An aside: someone commented recently that if this were happening in China, that people would be executed. I can’t say that I think that would be a bad idea.)
But the current problem is so widespread, and involves so much of the business/monied classes in the US and Europe, that nationalization is generally considered a ‘nuclear option’, a last resort to be avoided at almost all costs.
Well, we’re seeing what “all costs” means, right now. I do actually want to talk about AIG a bit here. You should read Joe Nocera’s column from last Friday, titled “Propping Up a House of Cards“. Here’s a couple of relevant excerpts:
If we let A.I.G. fail, said Seamus P. McMahon, a banking expert at Booz & Company, other institutions, including pension funds and American and European banks “will face their own capital and liquidity crisis, and we could have a domino effect.” A bailout of A.I.G. is really a bailout of its trading partners — which essentially constitutes the entire Western banking system.
* * *
There’s more, believe it or not. A.I.G. sold something called 2a-7 puts, which allowed money market funds to invest in risky bonds even though they are supposed to be holding only the safest commercial paper. How could they do this? A.I.G. agreed to buy back the bonds if they went bad. (Incredibly, the Securities and Exchange Commission went along with this.) A.I.G. had a securities lending program, in which it would lend securities to investors, like short-sellers, in return for cash collateral. What did it do with the money it received? Incredibly, it bought mortgage-backed securities. When the firms wanted their collateral back, it had sunk in value, thanks to A.I.G.’s foolish investment strategy. The practice has cost A.I.G. — oops, I mean American taxpayers — billions.
Here’s what is most infuriating: Here we are now, fully aware of how these scams worked. Yet for all practical purposes, the government has to keep them going. Indeed, that may be the single most important reason it can’t let A.I.G. fail. If the company defaulted, hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps would “blow up,” and all those European banks whose toxic assets are supposedly insured by A.I.G. would suddenly be sitting on immense losses. Their already shaky capital structures would be destroyed. A.I.G. helped create the illusion of regulatory capital with its swaps, and now the government has to actually back up those contracts with taxpayer money to keep the banks from collapsing. It would be funny if it weren’t so awful.
OK, still, AIG was just a symptom, even as central a role as it plays in this fiasco. What was the cause?
It’s tempting to say “greed” and just leave it at that. But the problem is bigger than that. It’s “trust”. Trust that housing prices would continue to rise, regardless. Trust that people would act rationally, and only buy homes that they could afford. Trust that loan officers would only loan to people who were qualified. Trust that bank managers would execute proper oversight. Trust that banking executives would exercise due judgment. Trust that credit markets would operate to offset risk with reserves. Trust that rating agencies would rate risk appropriately. Trust that the invisible hand of the marketplace would keep excess in check. And trust that failing any of these, the govermental regulatory agencies would intercede and enforce statuatory limitations.
Well, you can see where trust has gotten us. Take nothing on faith. Over the last couple of decades, regulation was relaxed and business sought to push the boundaries further, creating new financial instruments which the average person can barely understand. The experts told us it was all hunky-dory, and we believed them. But we should have noted that they were the ones to benefit from the whole scheme, and been less trusting. Or, more accurately, we should have demanded that our elected representatives in government were less trusting. But they stood to benefit as well, with the corruption of corporate donations to campaigns and lucrative Board positions once politicians left office.
I must admit to being sorely tempted to come to the conclusion that we deserve what is happening. Very sorely tempted.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Depression, Emergency, Failure, Government, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Weather
It’s been a warm week here in central Missouri. 40s early on, up almost to 70 midweek. Yesterday it was 60s. With sun, and the sort of rain you get in early spring.
Little wonder that the trees are starting to bud, jonquils break through the topsoil, snowdrops in full riot.
Naturally enough, it’s supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow.
* * * * * * *
NPR had a fascinating – and frightening – story this morning:
Taxpayer Beware: Bank Bailout Will Hurt
A single piece of paper may just be one of the most surprising and illuminating documents of the whole banking crisis.
It’s a one-page research note from an economist at Deutsche Bank, and it outlines in the clearest terms the kind of solution many bankers are looking for. The basic message: We should forget trying to get a good deal for taxpayers because even trying will hurt.
“Ultimately, the taxpayer will be on the hook one way or another, either through greatly diminished job prospects and/or significantly higher taxes down the line,” the document says.
The story called the piece of paper a “Ransom Note.” Or, as the presenter put it another way, “That’s a nice global economy you got there. Be a real shame if anything happened to it.”
Shakedown, baby.
* * * * * * *
But it may be too late for that, already. Surprising everyone, the US economy contracted at an annualized rate of 6.2% in the last quarter of 2008. Overnight, the government worked out a deal to own upwards of 36% of Citibank Corp. Consumer spending has dropped off radically as people react to the uncertain economy and start to pay down the historically high debt ratios – ratios which haven’t been seen since 1929.
And it’s not limited to just us. Japanese manufacturing output fell 10% just last month, on top of a 9.8% drop in December – a stunning drop, the likes of which has not been seen for over 50 years. That is a reflection of the drop off in demand globally.
* * * * * * *
There will be snow tonight and tomorrow. How much damage it does to the flowers and trees will remain to be seen. But it sure seems that spring is a long ways off.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Daily Kos, Depression, Emergency, Failure, Health, Society, Survival
For the first time since the Dance of Stupidity & Pain I took the dog for his morning walk today. Just got back. And gawds, does my knee hurt. Between the half mile walk and the 18 degree temp out, I feel like someone shot me just below the knee.
As I expected.
But it had to be done.
* * * * * * *
There was a good segment on NPR this morning, with an economic historian who has a new book out about the Great Depression. One of the things that emerged from the piece was his comment about how the current economic situation is frightenly familiar to the situation then. From the NPR website:
Ahamed calls the similarities between our current economic problems and the Great Depression “eerie.” He points out that both crises began with a bubble, and that both bubbles were caused, in his view, by mistakes in federal review policy. And, when both bubbles burst, they eventually led to a banking crisis.
But, he says, the leaders of today can learn from the lessons of the Great Depression: First, he says, we should not let the banking system collapse. Second, we should not go to extreme lengths to try to protect the currency. Third, we need to let the budget deficit expand.
“The problem of the Great Depression was … a failure of intellectual will. The danger this time might be a failure of political will,” says Ahamed. “To bail out the banks is going to cost a lot of money, and the American public are so angry that they are not, at the moment, willing to sign a blank check.”
* * * * * * *
The heating pad helps. And in a few minutes I’ll get up, go find some OTC stuff to take to help the pain. But I expect that it’ll ache for much of the day, and this will complicate my plans to do some conservation work this afternoon (I work standing – always have. Most binders do, since you need to move a fair amount.)
So, why did I go for a walk? It’s been less than a week – I could have easily put it off a bit longer, let the bruised bone heal some more.
Because, as painful as I knew this would be, I didn’t want to let the rest of my body lose too much ground. Oh, I’ve been doing other exercises these last few days, but nothing is as good for me as walking is. Pain isn’t always an enemy.
Understanding that, accepting that, is one of the first steps to maturity, I think. I remember when I first read the passage from Dune where young Paul is tested by the Bene Gesserit to determine whether he is “human”. I was perhaps 9 or 10, and the scene impressed me greatly, gave me a jump start on dealing with the pain which would come to me early in life.
* * * * * * *
As noted in some of my posts here about the economy, I’m more than a little pissed off about how we got into this mess. Quite honestly, I think there’s quite a few candidates for a “Head-on-Pike Award of the Month” competition, complete with categories for “Best Expression”, “Most Deserving”, and “Ideal for Throwing Things At”. That many of these same people still hold elected office, or have been receiving massive bonuses (or complaining about not being able to get the bonuses they ‘deserve’) just adds to my dark musings about appropriate means of getting said heads on said pikes.
So yeah, I’m angry. And yeah, that influences my willingness to just write blank checks to cover the debts that these various and sundry assholes created.
But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.
* * * * * * *
Anyone who has been through any kind of serious injury or disease knows that there comes a point where you have to make a decision. You have to either hide from the continuing pain as best you can, using drugs or changing your lifestyle, or you have to do your best to get past the pain and do whatever you can to cope with the effects of your injury.
Neither choice is necessarily “right”. But they each come with consequences.
I have made choices each way, depending on the situation. I will not judge the choices that another makes.
Except when those choices have consequences for me. Like this:
Jindal rejects La.’s stimulus share
Louisiana‘s Bobby Jindal, a Republican, became the first governor Friday to refuse officially a part of his state’s share of the $787 billion stimulus bill, while President Obama warned the nation´s mayors to spend stimulus money wisely.
While some governors were subtly backing off previous statements that they wouldn’t take their share of the windfall, Mr. Jindal issued a statement saying Louisiana would not participate in a program aimed at expanding state unemployment insurance coverage.
“Increasing taxes on our Louisiana businesses is certainly not a way to stimulate our economy. It would be the exact wrong thing we could do to encourage further growth and job creation,” said Mr. Jindal, although the Louisiana legislature could override his decision.
No, I don’t live in LA. But this kind of behavior – and similar behavior by other Republican governors elsewhere – will have an impact on all of us, across the country. That it comes from the party that got us into this mess doesn’t make me any more sympathetic. That it comes at this point when states have been sucking up billions of Federal dollars at every opportunity for decades means that I cannot possibly see it as in any way credible. It is just grandstanding, and hypocritical to boot.
* * * * * * *
Well, this has taken longer than I intended. I guess I had more to say than I thought. Or maybe I’m just in more pain than I realized, and am using this as a distraction.
Look, this really is pretty simple. Yeah, the deficits necessary to get us out of this depression are going to hurt. And it is galling that no small amount of money is going into the pockets of people who directly caused it, or to save the bacon of pols who are blathering about how they don’t want it. If you want, you can also be pissed off at those who “bought more house than they could afford” and who may now get bailed out of that bad decision. It doesn’t matter – be pissed at who you want, however you want – so long as this gets done. Otherwise, we will just continue to bleed, to suffer, to experience pain until it consumes us and ruins our lives for decades.
I know which path I’ll take.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to Daily Kos.)
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Failure, Government, ISS, movies, NASA, Phil Plait, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Star Trek, Survival, tech, Travel, UFO
This item made the news yesterday:
Scientists eye debris after satellite collision
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Scientists are keeping a close eye on orbital debris created when two communications satellites — one American, the other Russian — smashed into each other hundreds of miles above the Earth.
NASA said it will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the unprecedented crash and whether any other satellites or even the Hubble Space Telescope are threatened.
The collision, which occurred nearly 500 miles over Siberia on Tuesday, was the first high-speed impact between two intact spacecraft, NASA officials said.
Wow: two satellites have collided in orbit, destroying both. This is the first time such a major collision has ever occurred.
The satellites were Cosmos 2251, a Russian communication relay satellite that’s been defunct for a decade, and an Iridium satellite, one of a fleet of communication satellites launched by Motorola in the late 90s and early 2000s.
* * *
There have been collisions in space before, but never from such large satellites — the Iridium bird was about 700 kg, and the Cosmos was about the same — and never resulting in a total wipeout like this. Again, if I have my numbers about right, the explosion resulting from the energy of impact would have been about the same as detonating a ton of TNT.
I had to chuckle at this comment in that thread at Bad Astronomy:
But wouldn’t the impact have made a new, ever more powerful hybrid satellite? It would have an over-arching need to communicate and would do so in Russian. The only way to make it stop broadcasting a constant barrage at us would be if it mistook someone for its designer at Motorola and then. . . Oh wait, this isn’t Star Trek.
No, not at all. When you have two large satellites, each moving at something on the order of about 5 miles a second hit one another at nearly right angles, then you don’t get any kind of hybrid. You get a mess. As in a debris cloud of upwards of a thousand bits and pieces of space junk, some of it substantial, most of it still moving at thousands of miles an hour, and all of it dangerous.
I’ve written previously about the threat of real ‘UFOs’ to our space exploration. From the quoted article in that post:
The reason is life-and-death. Since Mercury days, NASA engineers have realized that visual sightings of anomalies can sometimes provide clues to the functioning — or malfunctioning — of the spaceships that contain their precious astronauts. White dots outside the window could be spray from a propellant leak, or ice particles, flaking insulation, worked-loose fasteners (as in this latest case) or inadvertently released tools or components.
Whatever the objects might be, they pose a threat of coming back in contact with the spacecraft, potentially causing damage to delicate instruments, thermal tiles, windows or solar cells, or fouling rotating or hinged mechanisms. So Mission Control needs to find out about them right away in order to determine that they are not hazardous.
Right now the bulk of that debris cloud is about 250 miles higher than the ISS. But it will slowly drift closer (the effect of atmospheric drag – even at that altitude, it will slow anything in orbit, meaning that the item in question will drop to a lower orbit). At some point, this could be a real threat to the space station.
And beyond that, it is a further complication to *any* effort to get into something other than a low Earth orbit. Currently we have something like tens of thousands of bits of “space junk” that have to be tracked – and while all of it will eventually fall back into the atmosphere and burn up, it can present a real danger. If we’re not careful, we could encase ourselves in a shell of so much junk that it would basically eliminate the possibility of travel beyond our planet for decades.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Civil Rights, Constitution, Daily Kos, Failure, Government, Guns, Politics, RKBA, Society
No, not from blogging. And it is only tangentially related to yesterday’s post. Rather, from visiting some of my usual gun forums – the upcoming inauguration has caused a resurgence of hatin’ on “LIEBRALS and DEMONCRATS”, and I just don’t have the stomach for it right now. As I said in a diary I posted on dKos a month ago:
I have given up participation in some gun forums for being told that I cannot be a gun owner and still be a liberal. Seriously, sometimes it is impossible to get other gun owners to understand that this issue does not need to be one which breaks down according to party alignment (and isn’t good for gun rights if it does). Even my family and some of my gun-owning friends have a hard time wrapping their head around it. The most common refrain is that no “true” gun owner can possibly be a liberal, or vote for a Democrat.
It happened again to me last night in one forum I particularly like. But I’ve seen much too much such sentiment the last week or so, on a variety of such discussion forums.
It’s maddening. Maddening because it is so damned short-sighted. A lot of people would rather be “pure” than win – they don’t care if they lose an argument, or their rights, so long as they get to trumpet their moral superiority. And a whole lot of “gun-rights activists”, who have tied their activism to the tail of an elephant, and now are so aligned with that party that they can’t see that there is a better path to preserving their Second Amendment rights. A path where the RKBA, and all the rest of the Bill of Rights, is respected and preserved by *both* major political parties. No, they would much rather pay homage to the GOP, and so alienate most moderate gun owners that they seem to be extremists – and therein delegitimize their cause, perhaps even hastening new pointless gun control legislation.
Gah. Makes me crazy.
So, I’m going to take a break. Being off to the wilds of northern California next week will help. Maybe the worst of this outbreak will pass by the time I get back.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to Ballistics by the inch Blog and UTI.)
Filed under: Climate Change, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Guns, Health, Humor, movies, Nuclear weapons, Predictions, Preparedness, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Weather
Gah – it’s 55 degrees here. Inside, I mean. No, we don’t have the thermostat turned that low. The heating system, an old hot-water radiator setup, just can’t keep up when the temps get down to below zero Fahrenheit. Not in an old house with minimal insulation (and no simple way of adding any). So we wander around, playing Quintet, waiting for something resembling normal weather to return, trying to get done what we can.
It’s sobering. And instructive. In Communion of Dreams I stipulate a long period of harsh winters for much of the northern hemisphere, following the ‘small’ nuclear war in Asia. Having lived through some 15 Iowa winters, it was easy to imagine what that would be like. But I was younger, and memory is fleeting. Combine those cold conditions for a prolonged period with an economic collapse, and those years in my novel would be brutal – moreso than any of us probably understand.
And let’s hope it stays that way. When I read things like this, I wonder whether I have been entirely too optimistic about our future. Then again, not like these geniuses have been right about anything else for the last couple of years.
Wait – they’ve been entirely too optimistic, too, haven’t they? That’s what got us into this financial mess.
Gods, now I really am depressed.
And cold.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Emergency, Failure, Government, Politics, Predictions, Society
So, last time I borrowed money from a bank, for a Federally-guaranteed Small Business Loan, it was a bit of a nightmare. They wanted to know everything down to my shoe size, with a fair amount of documentation to support the claim that I wear an 11 wide. And, needless to say, they wanted to know exactly what I was going to do with the $50,000 I wanted to borrow – complete with a detailed business plan, revenue forecasts, et cetera. Given that I wanted to borrow the money, I didn’t find this too onerous; rather it seemed to be a reasonable expectation, if a tad tedious.
But don’t expect that street to run both ways.
Where’d the bailout money go? Shhhh, it’s a secret
WASHINGTON – It’s something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where’s the money going?
But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation’s largest banks say they can’t track exactly how they’re spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.
“We’ve lent some of it. We’ve not lent some of it. We’ve not given any accounting of, ‘Here’s how we’re doing it,'” said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. “We have not disclosed that to the public. We’re declining to.”
The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what’s the plan for the rest?
None of the banks provided specific answers.
Well, no, of course they didn’t. It might lead to somewhat awkward revelations, such as this:
AP study finds $1.6B went to bailed-out bank execs
Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.
The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.
Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.
Your tax dollars at work.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI and dKos.)
Communion Of Dreams 