Wall Street’s Socialist Jet-Setters
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT
WASHINGTON
As President Obama spreads his New Testament balm over the capital, I’m longing for a bit of Old Testament wrath.
Couldn’t he throw down his BlackBerry tablet and smash it in anger over the feckless financiers, the gods of gold and their idols — in this case not a gilt calf but an $87,000 area rug, a cache of diamond Tiffany and Cartier watches and a French-made luxury corporate jet?
Now that we’re nationalizing, couldn’t we fire any obtuse bankers and auto executives who cling to perks and bonuses even as the economy is following John Thain down his antique commode?
How could Citigroup be so dumb as to go ahead with plans to get a new $50 million corporate jet, the exclusive Dassault Falcon 7X seating 12, after losing $28.5 billion in the past 15 months and receiving $345 billion in government investments and guarantees?
(More here.)
NYT
WASHINGTON
As President Obama spreads his New Testament balm over the capital, I’m longing for a bit of Old Testament wrath.
Couldn’t he throw down his BlackBerry tablet and smash it in anger over the feckless financiers, the gods of gold and their idols — in this case not a gilt calf but an $87,000 area rug, a cache of diamond Tiffany and Cartier watches and a French-made luxury corporate jet?
Now that we’re nationalizing, couldn’t we fire any obtuse bankers and auto executives who cling to perks and bonuses even as the economy is following John Thain down his antique commode?
How could Citigroup be so dumb as to go ahead with plans to get a new $50 million corporate jet, the exclusive Dassault Falcon 7X seating 12, after losing $28.5 billion in the past 15 months and receiving $345 billion in government investments and guarantees?
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Since the fearful **cks at the NYT closed down their comments before 10:00 I’ll try to post my comment here:
Is Mo Dowd really swimming against the tide of NYT support for the new GWOE (Global War on Economics)? Has Krugman been ‘progressively’ slipping something into her drink?
Mo, as a friend I feel I must warn you in the strongest terms that you are in serious danger of being judged "unhelpful" (as Cheney would say), and perhaps even the dreaded "not a team player" if you continue this tirade in direct contradiction to the NYT’s ‘selling of the stimulus’.
What are you doing girlfriend? The marketing strategy has been ‘set’ (as Downing Street would say), the ‘product roll-out’ and marketing introduction is already in motion for the ’09 model year, the rubes are rapt to their TVs and the most influential newspaper of record, and you, girl, are getting in the way of progress --- you’re not greasing the gears but making them grind. And that kind of grinding --- even from a hottie --- is again, “unhelpful”.
Yes, “Wall Street’s Socialist Jet-Setters” as you so rightly call them are ready to go:
All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin', it's early morn
The taxi's waitin', he's blowin' his horn
Already I'm so lonesome I could die
So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go
'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go.
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/chantalkreviazuk/leavingonajetplane.html
Well, Mo, they (the ruling-elite) really aren’t all that unhappy to go. In fact, as the late Christopher Lasch presciently pointed out in his 1995 “The Revolt of the Elites: and the Betrayal of Democracy”, the ruling-elite was always fated to go, to leave on their jet planes, to desert this mortal coil of democracy, before a coil of rope by the mob made them leave ---- or as Raul Julia explained to Robert Redford in “Havana” why the peoples revolution must actually ‘fight’ the Batista corporatist regime, “They will not leave by asking NICELY”.
But, Mo, our ruling-elite corporate financial Empire is all too willing to be much more accommodating and “leave nicely” --- as long as they can leave with their booty, and more comfortably than the political economic Ponzi crooks had to rush out of Albania in shabby little boats to Greece in ’97 when their small scale Ponzi collapsed. This is a global Ponzi, and more comfortable accommodations and reservations must by developed by their concierge (love those Americanized French terms like concierge and “Vichy”, as in ‘Vichy’ government, don’t you, Mo). There’s also the critical issue of a sufficient ‘rear guard action’. The ruling-elite well know that all the very best Generals say that a ‘strategic retreat’ is the most demanding military maneuver --- and they wanted/needed to pick the right Commander.
Anyway, Mo, in this case, and this place, the squeaky wheel doesn’t get the grease when ‘selling the stimulus’ is as important as ‘selling the war’ was to Judith and her bosses. In fact, girl, your shrill, whistle-blowing squeak won’t get you any grease – and it may even cost you your first class ticket to Greece, if that’s where these Ponzi masters of the universe intend to reprise the “Great Escape”.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
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