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Disgorge the Bastards!

Getting mad as hell at tycoon villains is the new buzz.

By Vanessa Richmond, 4 Feb 2009, TheTyee.ca

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Mad as hell, and loving it!

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Fill your Olympian lungs with bong smoke, throw an F-bomb tantrum on a movie set. Yawn. Dumb moves by celebs like Michael Phelps and Christian Bale just don't fire the public ire like they used to. Not since the recession sent people into a kind of confused shock, that's now maturing into collective rage targeted at villains like John Thain.

Thain, the CEO of Merrill Lynch who, after his firm sucked down millions in U.S. government bailout money, cut thousands of jobs while spending $1.22 million renovating his office. Little decorative touches like an $87,000 rug and a $1,400 parchment wastepaper basket were what sent people from tut-tuting to steaming. A final flourish was that he told underlings to cut expenses including car services, while he spent $230,000 on his own driver.

On Tuesday morning, with the blogosphere mob chasing him down the street holding virtual pitchforks and torches, Thain resigned.

To the gallows!

As the meltdown continues to drip, the temperature of the public reaction to titans' troubles has gone from cold smugness to hot blooded calls for revenge.

It got going with the news that Citigroup planned to go ahead with its order of a $50 million, 12-seater, luxury, private jet from France, despite having accepted $45 billion in taxpayer funded bailouts. A reportedly angry President Obama is said to have personally ditched that idea in the Hudson, phoning the bank's bosses and telling them to "fix it." Let's just say, readers liked that response.

Then we learned that executives at various bailed-out companies recently took home over $18.6 billion in bonuses. That's what really did it. I now am able to fill my day, if I wish, discussing with friends the virtues of bringing back the guillotine, and where might be the ideal public venue to begin lopping off corporate heads.

What might appease the growing rabble? For starters, any exec who's laying off workers in either Canada or the U.S. should first reduce his or her (though it's usually "his" of course) own salary to that of an average employee. Where companies have accepted any government help and execs have taken bonuses, governments should not only take back those bonuses, but claw back some of their salaries and perks (like, say, private jets), and pay the money out to the workers they've laid off. Execs of ailing companies (especially those responsible for the sub-prime and other disasters) should themselves be laid off, forced to apologize to their workers, and then replaced with "average" workers.

I and my wild-eyed mob are now laughing out loud at previously sacrosanct economic ideas like that companies can't attract the best without offering lofty financial rewards. Can anyone really say that execs' value (sometimes remunerated in the billions of dollars) is worth hundreds of times more than the front line worker, usually paid under $10/ hour? Let's run the experiment. Fire them. Then let's see how much worse off companies actually are without their super-powered and super-paid leadership. I'm just saying.

Disgorge 'em!

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wants nothing less than disgorgement. (I thought at first that meant a kind of disemboweling, but it's only of a financial type.) "The president's disgust at Wall Street looters was good," she wrote. "But we need more. We need disgorgement. Disgorgement is when courts force wrongdoers to repay ill-gotten gains. And I'm ill at the gains gotten by scummy executives acting all Gordon Gekko while they're getting bailed out by us. Anyone who gave bonuses after accepting federal aid should be fired, and that money should be disgorged to the Treasury."

On Tuesday morning, Obama officials announced plans to do some of that. Companies that accepted government severance packages penned under the Bush administration (Citigroup, American International Group, General Motors, Chrysler LLC) will face pay limits and reduced bonus pools.

It made me wonder how much money the Canadian government could go after Nortel execs or others for. I wonder, too, when the anger building in this country, so far aimed largely at the titans (Titanics?) of Wall Street who sent the world economy into the drain, will turn back on our own enabling politicians and financial leaders.

Meantime, all this white hot rage is having a certain cauterizing effect on our culture's obsession with celebrity. Brangelina's Japanese airport photo shoot -- just them and their six-kid elite preschool -- got some attention, then quickly dropped off the radar. Right now, actors aren't as interesting as the real thing.

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Vanessa Richmond's 'Shlock and Awe' take on popular culture runs weekly on The Tyee.

11 Comments:

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  • NicS

    3 years ago

    Does Gordon Campbell Keep His Pay Raise

    In the eight or more years the Liberals have been in power they have voted themselves at least 2 pay raises. Now he wants to cut back the civil service, instead of reducing everybodies salaries. Whats wrong with the idea that we all need to tighten our belts, what puts him and his cronies above us all.

    One thing and one thing only, GREED, and the distorted notion that he is more deserving than us.

    It is time to dump the Liberals.

  • James Burns

    3 years ago

    It's about time!

    Those financial goons should be stripped of their assets and thrown in jail. Their hypocrisy and greed is the epitome of disgusting. Incompetents awarding themselves for their complete failure and incompetence.

    It would be good to see some of the US public's reaction start to take hold up here. I sometimes wonder in awe at the utter lack of concern by the public over the utter corruption of the BC Liberal government. The list of wasted public money is mindboggling, but that doesn't hold a candle to the pathetic lack of attention paid to scandal after scandal by the public.

  • ME2

    3 years ago

    Wall Street redux

    My guess is that in coming months we're likely to see a slew of these guys' buddies thrown to the wolves as scapegoats to the public's anger. This will be followed by a spate of stories in the MSM telling us how things have now been made aright in the Wall Streets of the various Nations of the World.

    Soothers aren't just those things that get shoved into our mouths as babies, they get thrust into our ears as adults too.

  • jrb

    3 years ago

    mob justice, anyone?

    it would be really hard for one member of the public to get access to a corporate executive's office, car, or home.
    but 1000 members of the public could ...

  • PatrickMcEvoyHalston

    3 years ago

    Rage

    The recession related levity seems to have lasted all of two weeks, eh?

    It may be that we are rageful because we are feeling abandonned--we still imagine our leaders as neglectful parents--parents who won't attend to us even though we're enduring all this carnage earning the masochistic wage of only ten bucks an hour! The benefit of working 10 bucks an hour (something you've referred to a few times in your last articles), btw, is that "your" rage is unquestionably righteous--"you" work the "front lines" for peanuts while "armchair" managers coast on 10 mill a year?! Guillotines, indeed!

    And what about the Americans? They've been sucking out our lifeblood on the cheap for ages! Even if it further sinks our economy (which is what we want anyway, to get rid of all the anxiety economic growth brings with it), it's about time someone stood up to those brutes! Time for (our version of) Pitchfork Pat (Buchanan)!? Why, perhaps--Yes: watch the transformation former neo-con Harper joyously makes to court our favor and direct our rage!

    patrick mcevoy-halston

  • crh

    3 years ago

    I agree with jrb...we need

    I agree with jrb...we need to see more mob justice.

    Eat the rich or at the least spit on them

  • PatrickMcEvoyHalston

    3 years ago

    placental monster

    Those who are psychohistorically inclined, and who believe that our experience in the uterus--from large "roomed," clean blood environment, to crowded, poluted blood environment (just before birth)--is a "storyline" that is near impossible to get out of our heads, might be interested in the theory that what we are now re-experiencing/restaging is the stage just before birth, where the octupus-like "arms" of the placenta surrounded and suffocated us, and inspired, great angry rage.

  • alda

    3 years ago

    CHICKENS COMING HOME TO ROOST FOR THE SLEEPING PUBLIC

    Nice to see the public finally waking up from its 47-year potato-couch slumber. But the outrage is too little, too late -- rather like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. Who didn't see years ago that paying execs, entertainers, and athletes, more than say, $400,00 a year (relatively by current standards, and approx. double the salary of a well-paid, educated professional) wasn't contributing to the rotting of society from the inside out? And that was only one tiny symptom of the general, pervasice illness. Where was the outrage, then?

    The US is now some 52 TRILLION dollars in debt, according to former US auditor general, David Walker, among others. When what is needed is a rigorous and ruthless purging of the entire North American banking and economic system, Obama's magic solutions, thus far, seem to be mere taps on the wrist. I, for one, am not holding my breath for real change.

  • kootenay

    3 years ago

    The Best Money Can Buy

    This proves once and for all that CEO's making millions of dollars per year are no more able to predict the future than a CEO making $500,000 per year.

    The right has argued endlessly that we need to pay huge salaries to attract the best, the best alright, the best liars and cheats money can buy!

  • KWD

    3 years ago

    civil unrest, coming to a theater near you

    You are right James it would be encouraging to see more public concern. I think the reason why the level of anger and rage shown in Canada is hardly noticeable when compared to south of the border, and in some European countries, is that the numbers of folks in pain is much smaller than in those countries. The implosion of the auto industry in eastern Canada may soon change that situation.

    However, you can rest assured that those keeping their fingers on the pulse of this meltdown are making sure our political leaders are not unaware of the seriousness of the threat posed by civil unrest.

    If you've been watching BBC news lately, you will notice that, in France in particular, the working class is getting very upset with what's happening in financial circles. They are extremely upset about billions of bucks going to the people that already have billions of bucks while the workers are asked to eat cake. Marchers numbered in hundreds of thousands. Some sources claim they were in the millions.

    More importantly, news coverage showed that crowd control measures ... police or military forces ... were very noticeable and numerous.

    Also, if you watch much TV, you may have noticed the increasing frequency of "Fight" (join the military) propaganda. This propaganda is also in most movie theaters where young folks (biggest percentage of movie goers) are being bombarded with this bull sh-t.

    There is also a move to create multi national military forces. This kite was flown in Canada in the recent past and got very little attention. France and Germany (age old enemies) have just agreed to multi-national brigades and joint defense strategies. One might want to ask "Why?".

    Our leaders are very worried ... but not about replacing military lost to battle in the mid East or keeping terrorists from targeting large crowds or discouraging terrorist acts during the 2010 games ... they are worried because they know who will be targeted when the struggle for survival gains momentum.

  • PatrickMcEvoyHalston

    3 years ago

    alda

    Hello Alda.

    There was no outrage "then" because most Cdns actually get uncomfortable when good things--like constantly increasing wages--happen to them. The average blue collar worker was earning about as much or even more than the average white collar worker in the 70s (a time when the Republicans tried to prove themselves Democrat, rather than reverse.) They got sorta rich, they got sorta happy, and they couldn't handle it, and voted in Reagan/Thatcher/Mulroney hell. They weren't conned--they wanted to suffer, because their suffering proved they weren't enjoying themselves too much. Sound alien to you? --good: it's not a good place to be.

    And, oh--though we might take pleasure in seeing the right Corporates 'come corpses, overall suffering will likely stay on the rise as Cdns do the likely and wish Harper from free marketer 'to ready peddler of the anti-U.S.A, protectionist drug. (In the next few years, many of us are going to lose [contact with] friends as they enter into some kind of "war trance" we just can't break through. Those who stay sane--the progressives who really just want a better, happier world: watch out!--you'll seem "suspect" to many of your war-painted friends you were foolish enough to think, on your side.)

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