What the Hell?!? Friday - Shared Sacrifice

Banking and trading revenues were way off in 2011 - whodda thunkit?

This means smaller bonus checks for people like Andrew Schiff, director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc

 Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.

Wow.  I sure feel his pain.  When I was 46, we had four kids in college.  Two were on scholarships, and two went to very affordable and close-to-home Eastern Michigan U.  Our summer rental was one week at Devil's Lake in Michigan's Irish Hills.  I think It cost about $600 back then.

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”

Wouldn't it be awful if those kids had to go to a (gasp) public school and rub elbows with - oh, I dunno - maybe my grandchildren?  If they did, then maybe the Rethugs wouldn't be so keen on destroying public education.
 

Wall Street’s cash bonus pool fell by 14 percent last year to $19.7 billion, the lowest since 2008, according to projections by New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. 

“It’s a disaster,” said Ilana Weinstein, chief executive officer of New York-based search firm IDW Group LLC. “The entire construct of compensation has changed.”

Somehow, I have a hard time believing that is a bad thing.

Richard Scheiner, 58, a real-estate investor and hedge-fund manager, said most people on Wall Street don’t save. 

“When their means are cut, they’re stuck,” said Scheiner, whose New York-based hedge fund, Lane Gate Partners LLC, was down about 15 percent last year. “Not so much an issue for me and my wife because we’ve always saved.” 

Scheiner said he spends about $500 a month to park one of his two Audis in a garage and at least $7,500 a year each for memberships at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester and a gun club in upstate New York. A labradoodle named Zelda and a rescued bichon frise, Duke, cost $17,000 a year, including food, health care, boarding and a daily dog-walker who charges $17 each per outing, he said.

There's a whole lot more misery in the Bloomberg article I linked above.  Go read it if you're hard-hearted enough to indulge yourself in a little schadenfreude.

Maybe I'd feel some sympathy (though, to be honest, since these jokers bring home over a third of a million dollars - a 13x multiple of median income - before bonuses, and spend every god-damned dime of it - probably not) if these people were actually contributing to society, rather than collecting usurious rents for engaging in totally non-value added activities that have distorted and perverted the American economy over the last four decades.

That is just about the span of Adrew Schiff's life.  Pity the poor sap.  He really doesn't know any better.

H/T to the LW

What the Hell?!? Friday - "Where the Hell Have You Been ?!?" Edition

Via Krugman, we learn that owners of iPhones and iPads ae leaving a data spoor trail, and it doesn't take a cyber blood hound to track them down.

British researchers who uncovered the hidden file say it logs the phone’s whereabouts for the previous 10 months, and includes a date and time stamp with each location. They also created a program allowing users to upload their data and build a map that researchers termed “remarkably detailed” and iPhone owners called “depressingly accurate.”

Users are non-plussed.

“I find it absolutely outrageous that my phone has been secretly documenting the fact that for nearly the past year, I have been going, basically, nowhere,” said Daphne Coleridge, a receptionist and mother of two in Houston. “This is a map of tedium. Home, school, work, store, home, school, work, store, home… wait… dentist. I stand corrected.”

Some are, quite frankly, minused.

“I value routine, so for me and my wife, it confirms our life is stable,” said Mark Tedeschi, a computer programmer in London. “It shows I usually go to the same places: work, the shops, our flat, and my best mate Dan’s house. I mapped my wife’s iPhone and it’s the same with her: work, the shops, our flat, and my best mate Dan’s house. Day after day, we’re both doing exactly … hang on.”

While it's easy to make light of this, there's a "BIG-BROTHER-IS-WATCHING" aspect to it that I've been worried about since I first read 1984, which was some time around 1964, IIRC.  Others are troubled, as well.

Sharp-eyed readers might notice that I am posting this on Saturday, not Friday. Well, give me break -- I was busy on Friday.

If you want to know where I went, just check my cell phone.

Update (4/25):  In comments, Steve directs us to this link.  Money and power.  Always a lovely combination.
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Quote of the Day

Excerpts of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:

While Republicans were distorting the facts in the health care debate and inflicting delay after needless delay, millions of Americans have continued to suffer as they struggle to afford to stay healthy, stay out of bankruptcy and stay in their homes.  Thousands of Americans lose their health care every day, and tens of thousands of the uninsured have lost their lives since this debate began.

Many Republicans now are demanding that we simply ignore the progress we’ve made, the extensive debate and negotiations we’ve held, the amendments we’ve added (including more than 100 from Republicans) and the votes of a supermajority in favor of a bill whose contents the American people unambiguously support.  We will not.  We will finish the job.

As you know, the vast majority of bills developed through reconciliation were passed by Republican Congresses and signed into law by Republican Presidents – including President Bush’s massive, budget-busting tax breaks for multi-millionaires.  Given this history, one might conclude that Republicans believe a majority vote is sufficient to increase the deficit and benefit the super-rich, but not to reduce the deficit and benefit the middle class.  Alternatively, perhaps Republicans believe a majority vote is appropriate only when Republicans are in the majority.  Either way, we disagree.

At the end of the process, the bill can pass only if it wins a democratic, up-or-down majority vote.  If Republicans want to vote against a bill that reduces health care costs, fills the prescription drug ‘donut hole’ for seniors and reduces the deficit, you will have every right to do so.

Where in the hell did THIS guy come from?!?

(H/T to Krugman)

My Thoughts Exactly

Same As He Ever Was

These days quite a few people are frustrated with President Obama’s failure to challenge conservative ideology. The spending freeze — about which the best thing you can say in its favor is that it’s a transparently cynical PR stunt — has, for many, been the final straw: rhetorically, it’s a complete concession to Reaganism.

But why should we be surprised? Here’s one from the vault. Two years ago, I was deeply frustrated with Obama’s apparent endorsement of the Reagan myth.

There was a lot of delusion among progressives who convinced themselves, in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, that Obama was a strong champion of their values. He wasn’t and isn’t.

That doesn’t mean that there’s no difference between the parties, that everything would have been the same if McCain had won. But progressives are in the process of losing a big chance to change the narrative, and that’s largely because they have a leader who never had any inclination to do so.

I love it when Krugman agrees with me.

UPDATE: Robert Reich and Ron Paul weigh in.

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What the Hell? Tuesday

There have been close to three dozen (I stopped counting them) hits on my blog today, from all over the U.S. and  Europe, with the referring link more or less as follows:

images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.wreckthetapedeck.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Salvador-Dal%C3%AD-In-Voluptate-Mors-photograph-by-Phillippe-Halsman.jpg&imgrefurl=http://jazzbumpa.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html&usg=__WaWX5N7TvXb-KJ

Actually, they vary a bit, following the final  "=" but the bulk of it is constant.

There is a  http://www.wreckthetapedeck.com/, which you might or might not enjoy.  I've searched the site, and can find neither a reference to my blog, nor anything that would send somebody here.  My posts on 2009/09/01 have nothing to do with Salvador, Vulpoate, Phillipe, etc.  On 2009/01/09 this blog did not yet exist.

Can anyone tell me what the hell is going on?

Update:  I have a hint at a solution. My crossword puzzle blog of 9/08/09 contains this link to a very interesting picture of Salvadore Dali.

http://www.wreckthetapedeck.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Salvador-Dal%C3%AD-In-Voluptate-Mors-photograph-by-Phillippe-Halsman.jpg
OK.  So there's the connection.   But what is the path back to here, and why, all of a sudden, today?
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Friday Hope Blogging

OK.  On a lot of fronts, things look pretty grim.

But, there is hope.

And as a follow-up to that link, I'll add this vignette.

Recently the lovely wife and I were traveling north on I-95 in VA.  We stopped at Exit 118 to get a coffee at the McDonalds there.  At that same moment, it was engulfed by a group of 5th graders from North Carolina, on a field trip to Washington D.C. - 200 kids, and a bunch of parents.

As we got in line, about a half dozen of them - all girls, as it turns out, and one dad were in line ahead of us.  In this group of kids were one of Asian extraction, at least one Latina, an African-American, and the very white-bead looking girl with her dad.

They were traveling together, eating together, and treating each other like human beings.  Remember, they were from NORTH CAROLINA.

When I was a kid, this wouldn't have happened in the mid-west.  Recognizing the fundamental human dignity of someone who does not look like you is the first step towards peaceful coexistence.  This gives me hope.
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Shameless Self-promotion

This is, so far as I know, the only time I have ever been mentioned in the text of an entry at a blog where I do not post.

With a link to here, as well.

Life is full of surprizes.

Sometimes, they're even good ones.

Thanx, P6.

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