Posts Tagged CEO
Heads on pikes
Posted by redlinedoc in Commentary of the times on June 22, 2009
It seems its a day of good news bad news. The good news seems to be that the boys at Goldman Sachs are snuffling at the trough and ready to suck up those great well deserved bonuses for having put us in the worst recession since the 30′s perhaps worse than that. I fear that we missed an opportunity for heads on pikes. I’m not ordinarily a gory sort of fellow; however, if a few of those egregious folk had their heads up along the boulevard perhaps fewer of these guys would be snorting at the trough so soon. Its a sign that regularion has lost and that we as a nation have or will loose big time now that the game is a foot and the money is liberally flying around again.
It makes me wonder in some ways what the big call is for CEO’s. I hear one company after another looking for the most expensive CEO guy they can find. I have no problem paying for success. Its the paying for the failures. United Airlines, General Motors, Chrysler, Hewlett Packard — each of those men and women walked away handsomely endowed with bonus and super bonus and stock options. As each of these companies tanked and drew down the economy we threw MORE money at CEO’s. I’ve yet to see cat skeleton’s around full cat food bowls. I believe if we all went to reasonable executive pay and said NO MORE! that indeed CEO’s would be paid proprionately and reasonably. Perhaps we should make the CEO take some of the risk (not with fako securities from the board but with his own monies. Perhaps, as in days of yore, CEO’s should bear a percentage of risk and win-lose with the company.
Danny DeVito, ever a mirror for the times, did it well with ‘Other People’s Money’.
The Harvard business school recently announced that they might teach business ethics to their grads. What a concept! Such things as stealing from old ladies is wrong, wiping out the life savings of people and towns is poor for future business, and the future. My son said that if once in a while if the inchoate mob, those who lost nearly everything, had an opportunity to be in a closed area with the hedgies and mutualaholics who ground their savings from real to immaginary numbers that much of this would be object lesson.
But then, that’s pretty gory.
Heads on pikes. Not a lot. Just a few. Some in Wall Street. Some on K Street. Some along the mall. Sobers the crowd and makes us remember that there really are people who are responsible. Until then, its still “Buddy can you spare a (discounted) dime.”
Let them eat cruisers …
Posted by redlinedoc in I never saw THAT coming on April 21, 2010
The big boys at Chrysler appear to have taken the pipe, 4 BILLION (with a ‘B’ folks) in losses since exiting bankrupty! I doubt that will stop the executive piggies from snorting at the money trough in the name of needing to pay the best and brightest.
We need to remind ourselves that the Mouth of Sauron himself, the Chrysler damage control guy, at meetings this past year said “Oh .. we put a bad engine in that car — but — (pregnant pause and I presume a wolfish smile), we don’t make them anymore.” Not making one of the mechanically lousiest cars on the road is scarcely a strategy designed to win hearts and minds of Americans.
The car had a sluggish start. It was very retro, very cute, very flawed. The power train with an automatic could scarcely get the car out of its own way. Add a turbo and stickshift and it did go. Fixing the cars, it was my mechanic’s nightmare, was another thing. It would appear that the engine had been dropped into the car without regard for access. After all what fool would want to fix this? Access to the engine required removing the right side of the car and all the steering gear there. The engine mounts blocked access to such non critical parts as the timing belt adjustment.
I attended school at UCONN (University of Connecticut) which at the time had one of the finest civil and mechanical engineering departments in the country. I have friends from MIT, CALTECH, CASE to name but a few. They seem pretty competent. Is it possible there’s a large vacuum at Chrysler which sucks the smarts out of the engineering staff, followed closely by the moral vacuum which removes all traces of morality. I have long thought that American ingenuity can solve most problems. The difficulty is that American greed removes the problem solving substituting marketing glitz, full of sound and fury, signifying, nothing.
business+ethics, CEO, Chrysler, ethics, executive+compensation, other+peoples+money, Sauron
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