Fannie and Freddie Paying Bonuses Too

Everyone pull your pants pockets inside out to show Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that all we have left is pocket lint. Just when the bon fires over AIG are starting to roar, the good folks over at Fannie and Freddie are passing out “Retention” bonuses. Yahoo News and the AP have an interesting piece on it…

This makes no sense to me but you know how them pesky bankers are, they charge you a hefty overdraft fee when you already didn’t have enough money to have the check clear in the first place.

The good folks in the government need to clarify what the term “Retention Bonus” really means. Yesterday on the news they had one congressman drilling AIG CEO Liddy on this practice and he asked one very pertinent question that left Liddy sputtering like Porky Pig. Paraphrasing - “You mean to tell me that with all the layoffs on Wall Street, you can not find anyone qualified to do the same jobs as these people?” Good point Congressman, very good point. As for having to pay “Retention Bonuses” to the very people responsible for the business collapse is frankly idiotic and unethical. I’m pretty sure that anyone is replaceable in any job in America. President Obama or Timmy Geithner could walk down to Wall Street today and put up a help wanted sign for AIG, Fannie, and Freddie and I’m pretty sure a long line of applicants would begin to build. Even without the promise of bonuses!

A few years back I worked for a privately owned manufacturing company that for almost thirty years in a row paid a profit sharing bonus of fifteen percent of your annual gross pay. As long as the company was profitable, employees worked hard, watched out for waste and cost savings then the payments would continue. Long story short, the owner eventually retired and sold the company to a conglomerate where the stock price and quarterly profit were the live by standard. The new owners ran the company on stocks and leveraged the company down the drain. Profit sharing disappeared for the most part with all of the additional executive salaries that were piled on top of the companies bottom line. Ten years after they bought it, the doors to an 800,000 square foot plant were closed and what was once lifetime jobs for some four hundred people were gone.

My point to my little story is this, it wasn’t the people running the machines in the plant that caused its failure, it wasn’t the people in the offices answering the phones or buying the raw materials that caused the failure, it wasn’t even the plant manager or even the general managers fault that the plant failed. It was pure greed from the executives and junior executives that didn’t even have an office at the company that brought about its demise. They had no sense of pride or ownership in the company because all the company was to them was a number on the quarterly profit statement.

Papamoka

Rove Calls it Dirty Politics on McCain?

For Karl Rove, the number one former GOP campaign operative of the Bush White House, to call John McCain on the carpet for dirty politics in his political ad’s against Barack Obama as going to far it wreaks of a rat. That would be like the Devil telling people that Hitler has gone too far? It just does not make sense from a die hard operative for the Republican Party.

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Even as a commentator on political events for CNN I just don’t believe these words came out of his mouth. The McCain campaign has gone so negative since the RNC Convention that it isn’t even funny and most of the negativity has been debunked on every political website out there. Is Karl Rove ahead of the curve in seeing that the strategy is not working? He has something he isn’t telling the media other than this little tid bit from his appearance on CNN…

updated 4:39 p.m. EDT, Sun September 14, 2008
Rove: McCain went 'too far' in ads

(CNN) -- Former Bush adviser Karl Rove said Sunday that Sen. John McCain had gone "one step too far" in some of his recent ads attacking Sen. Barack Obama.

Rove has leveled similar criticism against Obama.

"McCain has gone in some of his ads -- similarly gone one step too far," he told Fox News, "and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the '100 percent truth' test."

The Obama campaign immediately leaped on the quote.

"In case anyone was still wondering whether John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest campaign in history, today Karl Rove -- the man who held the previous record -- said McCain's ads have gone too far," said campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor, in a statement sent to reporters minutes after Rove's on-air comments. Rove masterminded both of President Bush's successful White House bids.

Rove said both candidates need to "be careful" about their attacks on each other.
"They ought to -- there ought to be an adult who says, 'Do we really need to go that far in this ad? Don't we make our point and won't we get broader acceptance and deny the opposition an opportunity to attack us if we don't include that one little last tweak in the ad?' " he said.

Obama on Saturday accused McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin of avoiding the issues to "distort" his record. - CNN

Karl Rove is the new Teflon Don of politics and nothing sticks to him. I give him credit for a well timed comment on the facts that negative advertisements from both campaigns is not the way to go. I just wonder where the hell he and the divide and conquer politics of the GOP are going next. One fact is certain, they are not going to be talking about the issues. That is a path they can not win on and the Obama campaign would be wise to point that fact out.

Granted Rove is also calling on the Obama camp on the carpet for doing the same thing but his opinion in Democrat circles isn’t valued much when his boy is tossing tons of mud at the wall and hoping that just a few pounds stick to it. McCain tosses it, Obama has to scrape it off the wall as just mud. In the meantime, the McCain campaign is not forced to talk about the issues facing America and that is the intended goal. More of saying nothing and doing nothing that effects the common voter.

Papamoka

McCain on the Economy

When it comes to the economy we can pretty much give Senator John McCain an F for Forgetaboutit! (New York City Accent)

McCain’s idea about dealing with the current troubles and economic collapse is to leave all options on the table? That’s a great sound bite but means absolutely nothing. It’s tantamount to telling a dead man in a car crash directions to the hospital.

Do I believe that John McCain is serious about rescuing our nation from the current economic downturn? No, I don’t! Apparently, his idea of fixing the housing crisis caused by “Irresponsible American’s” is to wait for the dust to settle. Umm, that pretty much means he is giving a green light to disreputable lending practices because people are stupid. Those people are American’s betrayed by our own banking industry. Over at the Washington Post they have this to say on his brilliant idea to fix the housing crisis…

McCain told reporters he would oppose any big government bailouts, saying they had not worked in the past and would not work in the future. But he expressed support for the Senate's economic stimulus package.

"We have got to restore confidence on the part of the American consumer to invest, to save, to do the things that make our economy run," the Arizona Republican said.

"We have got to find the floor on the cost of houses. When we find the floor, then there will be people who will come in and purchase some of these at bargain rates," he said.
A sharp downturn in the U.S. housing market has led to a full-blown credit crisis that has reverberated throughout the U.S. financial system.

Still, McCain said he was confident about America's economic future. "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," he insisted.

Some Democrats have criticized McCain for advocating a less interventionist approach to the housing and financial crises than either Clinton or Obama. McCain said in a speech on the economy last month it is "not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers." - Washington Post

When we find the floor? That is McCain’s answer to the housing crisis? When you are loosing your house you can’t take the floor with you. If you are a neighbor to a homeowner that lost their home in foreclosure it reflects on your own homes value. Vacant houses owned by banks waiting for a buyer that might pay for a bargain go empty for months and in some cases years when the evicted family takes the pipes and destroys the home rather than give the bank a move in condition home. Maybe McCain is right and you can wait for the floor? You’ll find the floor boards over at the surplus construction scrap outlet.

Is his plan to save the economy restoring the Hoovervilles of years gone by? Maybe his plan is to let the banks police themselves and fix the problems in their own back yard? Maybe his plan is to offer the banks mega tax cuts to repay all the favors he owes them? It’s not like he doesn’t know that end of the political spectrum given his Savings and Loan history.

McCain with every passing day in this election is coming off as a man that will wing it as President. Unfortunately, the Senator is gravely mistaken when it comes to the economy. It would help when he claims to have more economic background than Senator Clinton or Senator Obama if he actually had a workable plan to temporarily sure up the economy. Maybe his wing man has it?

McCain’s actions and thoughts on the economy are always limited to his own experience and with that thought in mind he sounds more and more like George W. Bush every single day.

No more W!

Papamoka

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