By injera, on May 25th, 2009%
Edmund L. Andrews, an economics reporter for the New York Times, has recorded his tale of financial woe in the soon-to-be-published Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown. An excerpt was published in the Times magazine a couple of weeks ago and, since I am still having trouble getting my head around the financial mess, I curled up with my laptop for a read.
If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us.
So far, so good. This seemed like the kind of person who might be able to put the crisis in terms I can understand and an anecdote is always a fine way to illuminate difficult concepts. Even now when I see the initials “GFC” my first thought is a that perhaps Mary Mac’s in Atlanta is franchising their yummy chicken; “perhaps after reading this,” I thought optimistically, “I’ll understand how so many economies lost so much money so quickly”.
Continue reading "My Personal Credit Crisis", or "WTF, charge it!"
By injera, on November 20th, 2008%
The Arthouse band lineups often read really well. On some days I think that if I were of a more creative bent I could write a novel based on the roster of names (or, at least, a short story). This one suggests both a plot and a couple of ideas to pick up for cover design:
This one is a bit too bleak for me to think about at the moment (even the effect of the rain on the chalkboard seems to fit with the overall vibe):
It also works as a commentary on the financial situation – I can see it as the caption for a photo of AIG executives.
By injera, on October 10th, 2008%
The Age is running a handy little multimedia page called “Economics Meltdown 101″. I particularly like this speculation, under the heading “What is the US rescue plan?”:
Even the amount nominated, almost US$150 billion more than the US has spent on the war in Iraq, was not chosen in any scientific way. A US treasury spokeswoman told Forbes magazine: “It’s not based on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
I’ll remember that next time I’m in wage negotiations…
By injera, on September 24th, 2008%
… the administration continues to balk at introducing any legislative curbs on Wall Street salaries. Paulson, who earned up to $30m annually when heading Goldman Sachs, said compensation was an issue to be dealt with separately.
“I’ve heard your concerns on executive compensation and I share those frustrations,” he said, adding that he was equally “upset” by certain examples of excess.
The Guardian Online
I’ve been trying to find a word, or a phrase, to describe the hideously inappropriate levels of compensation provided to people in certain jobs. That Henry Paulson isn’t the most generously remunerated person in the history of banking stinks. That, judging from his comment, he doesn’t consider consider $30 million a year excessive reeks. Thirty million dollars a year? I can’t understand how a person’s contribution can valued at $30 million annually; I’m trying to imagine a company budget sheet where one of the salary variables, when replaced by $30,000,000, returns a result that represents the best possible use of $30,000,000. It’s beyond my capacity, as a pathologically lazy person, to believe that a salary of this magnitude would provide any incentive for the person receiving it to do a good job for longer than, say, a year. I know that if my employer told me that I’d receive $30 million in the next financial year, I’d be planning my retirement. In fact, I’d probably try to do them a deal – say, $10 million for six months?
I know that these extraordinary (can I use the word “extraordinary” when, in fact, these obscene amounts appear to be quite ordinary in certain circles?) salaries are made up of bonuses and stock options and other things I know absolutely nothing about, but even taking that into consideration, the weekly/monthly paycheck must certainly inoculate the recipient against the sorts of concerns that harry the average person. For someone who has revelled in the largesse of an investment bank to then be in charge of the US Treasury, officially styled a “public servant”, and in a position to determine how the money of the average taxpayer might be spent on bailing out an economy run into the ground by people in his former profession seems absurd.
Maybe “paulson” is an appropriate (pejorative) adjective for ludicrously large sums of money.
