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I actually have fewer issues with those people than I do with the direct lenders that basically lies through their teeth when pitching mortgages to consumers. At least the CEOs of the world were merely looking at numbers.

Yeah, but I'm sure those tactics were thought of and approved by executives that get huge salaries and bonuses.

Andrew1975 wrote:
Yeah, but I'm sure those tactics were thought of and approved by executives that get huge salaries and bonuses.

Its more likely that they simply didn't care, if they knew at all. After all, the corporate architecture of banks doesn't usually involve itself with direct lending.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Melissia wrote:Course, CEOs of the world individually have the power to destroy more lives than deceitful mortgage lenders. And they often do just that, in the name of pursuing profit above all else.

I don't necessarily see either one as moral... one might be worse than the other, but they're still both something I'd rather not see happen at all.

I don't consider executive bonuses to be immoral in any case, but then I'm not one to consider very many things immoral at all.

It's not immoral at all.

Common sense dictates that executive bonuses continue. If we provide an incentive, they make the company more money, the company makes more money, the government make more money. We all win.

It's more complex than that, but the simple minded buffoons that make up the ranks of the class warriors don't tend to understand complex argument.

The argument against them is that bonuses incentivize short term decision making, thus pushing executives to meet goals on a year-by-year basis without regard to long term corporate health.

Shuma Gorath(?) It's not my plan. There's a whole movement that agrees with it - and they're smart people. You make a series of unsupported assumptions that have no relationship to reality. A large part of the problem is that "politician" was never meant to be a career.

"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual, and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty."
-- From the farewell address of George Washington

VoidAngel wrote:A large part of the problem is that "politician" was never meant to be a career.

Thing is, it works that way everywhere else and has for just about the whole of recorded history. Why would anyone expect it to be different?

VoidAngel wrote:
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind.

I should have stopped reading here.

VoidAngel wrote:
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.

Right, human nature, because humans by their nature group themselves together, defines what it is to be human. I guess that's "despotism", at least if we're all enslaved to gravity.

VoidAngel wrote:
-- From the farewell address of George Washington

I shouldn't be too hard on old George, he didn't have the benefit of 200 years of Hume's victory.

VoidAngel wrote:
Yes, the needy should and must be taken care of - but the folks with their hand out and filled with existential jealousy...they can rot in their self-imposed misery.

It is much more likely that they'll impose their misery on you.

VoidAngel wrote:
What other conceivable assumption is right?!

Call me a traditionalist, but taking something not yours is...there's a word for it....gimme a sec...'theft'? Yeah, that's it.

They have it. Why shall I assume they 'stole' it? What contortion of logic and morality should I apply to entitle myself to any portion of it?

I sense (hope) that you are asking from a philosophical perspective, so feel free to attempt to demonstrate that people do not deserve what they have honestly (or, at least legally) acquired.

You're begging the question by assuming possession is meaningful.

But to answer: there are many potential assumptions that can be thought of as "right". The most notable being the argument from collective generation, essentially that you have position, and thus possession, because of the system that you live in.

mattyrm wrote:Common sense dictates that executive bonuses continue. If we provide an incentive, they make the company more money

... only if those incentives are tied to actual results.

Only in executive pay can you do a bad job and still get enormous bonuses . Anywhere else in the company, your bonuses are tied to what you actually ACCOMPLISH. It's incredibly stupid, and there's an old saying that applies here: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is insanity.

Melissia wrote:.... only if those incentives are tied to actual results.

As I said, they usually are. Its simply that results in question are not things that effect you, most likely.

dogma wrote:

Melissia wrote:.... only if those incentives are tied to actual results.

As I said, they usually are. Its simply that results in question are not things that effect you, most likely.

And are oftentimes detrimental to the company at large?

"Hey, we just saved millions of dollars by cutting key personnel! Now we're going to take those millions of dollars we saved and give them to our executive officers as bonuses! So why is our company doing bad again?"

Melissia wrote:And are oftentimes detrimental to the company at large?

The company is the body of shareholders, the employees of the company are irrelevant. No one (or very few people) with monetary interest in the corporation cares about the workers.

Melissia wrote:
"Hey, we just saved millions of dollars by cutting key personnel! Now we're going to take those millions of dollars we saved and give them to our executive officers as bonuses! So why is our company doing bad again?"

Why are you assuming that such practices would cause fiscal problems for the corporation. That sounds like good business to me. Get rid of useless workers, and invest the surplus in executive talent.

Thing is, people talk about wanting corporations to do right by their employees, but those corporations don't tend to see fiscal penalties for not doing so; which says to me that its just bluster, and that most people don't really care.

The company is the body of shareholders, the employees of the company are irrelevant. No one (or very few people) with monetary interest in the corporation cares about the workers.

When a CEO is making 800 times what an average worker does, that has an effect on share returns, no? Also workers who are treated as chattel are less productive. If you look at he article I posted, you will see some evidence of this when you compare walmart structure to costco.

Andrew1975 wrote:
When a CEO is making 800 times what an average worker does, that has an effect on share returns, no?

Not a material one when spread across a few thousand (in the extreme conservative sense) shares.

Andrew1975 wrote:
Also workers who are treated as chattel are less productive. If you look at he article I posted, you will see some evidence of this when you compare walmart structure to costco.

Sure, that's definitely true, but which company is more valuable?

dogma wrote:The company is the body of shareholders, the employees of the company are irrelevant. No one (or very few people) with monetary interest in the corporation cares about the workers.

Yes, that IS a problem in many of the big companies.

dogma wrote:Why are you assuming that such practices would cause fiscal problems for the corporation.

Because the stated purpose of the cuts were to save the company money, which could be used to further the growth of the company for investment. Giving the money to the executive officers instead is counterproductive.

This happens all the time, so common that workers frequently no longer respect their CEOs, often being driven to obstructively passive aggressive behavior. Remember, the CEOs aren't actually themselves earning the companies money. It's the workers that do that. Alienating the company's workers is bad for the company, and companies that do this alienate their workers to the extreme, often causing their workers to look for other places to work.

mattyrm wrote:It's not immoral at all.

Common sense dictates that executive bonuses continue. If we provide an incentive, they make the company more money, the company makes more money, the government make more money. We all win.

It's more complex than that, but the simple minded buffoons that make up the ranks of the class warriors don't tend to understand complex argument.

Please stop being rude to people on the forum with whom you disagree.

Last year Barclay Bank paid its top 200 executives about £550 million in remuneration and emoluments. In 2009 Barclays Bank paid the UK Government £113 million in tax.

We've doshed out £200 billion in quantitative easing (printing money) to make the banks' lives easier. That is coming back to the public in the form of inflation.

You can't look at figures like that and say the UK is doing well out of Barclays Bank.

Melissia wrote:Yes, that IS a problem in many of the big companies.

I'm not sure its a problem, and I know its not limited to big companies.

Melissia wrote:
Because the stated purpose of the cuts were to save the company money, which could be used to further the growth of the company for investment. Giving the money to the executive officers instead is counterproductive.

Growth of the company isn't necessarily about buying physical assets (in fact, it almost never is). Often times investors, the real source of corporate growth, will express greater confidence when executives are well paid, or when a certain executive is attracted by a certain bonus structure.

Melissia wrote:
This happens all the time, so common that workers frequently no longer respect their CEOs, often being driven to obstructively passive aggressive behavior. Remember, the CEOs aren't actually themselves earning the companies money. It's the workers that do that. Alienating the company's workers is bad for the company, and companies that do this alienate their workers to the extreme, often causing their workers to look for other places to work.

Walmart is one of the most profitable companies in the world, they also have some of the most objectionable labor practices. Clearly their is no correlation between poor labor practices, and corporate profit.

Again, its pretty obvious that treating workers well isn't really all that important to most people.

Growth of the company isn't about having more investors. Just having a bunch of investors without any real capability makes for an empty, worthless company.

Or have we not yet learned from companies like Enron?

Much like the criminals in Batman, investors in the real world are a stupid, cowardly, superstitious lot.

Melissia wrote:Growth of the company isn't about having more investors. Just having a bunch of investors without any real capability makes for an empty, worthless company.

Or have we not yet learned from companies like Enron?

Corporate growth is driven by investor capital, whether or not that capital is used well basically comes down to corporate policy, which is determined by executives.

dogma wrote:

Melissia wrote:Growth of the company isn't about having more investors. Just having a bunch of investors without any real capability makes for an empty, worthless company.

Or have we not yet learned from companies like Enron?

Corporate growth is driven by investor capital, whether or not that capital is used well basically comes down to corporate policy, which is determined by executives.

And we come full circle!

Stupid, incompetent investors have their confidence boosted whenever stupid, incompetent CEOs are given bonuses for running the company into the ground, thereby staving off the company failing for another year, until they have to do it again.

Melissia wrote:And we come full circle!

Stupid, incompetent investors have their confidence boosted whenever stupid, incompetent CEOs are given bonuses for running the company into the ground, thereby staving off the company failing for another year, until they have to do it again.

I'm still wondering why these companies are always failing. You seem to be arguing that companies are failing because companies are failing, not because executive bonuses are causing them to do so.

To be honest, I think you're just angry about the fact that the wealthy are living well while the non-wealthy are not, which seems odd to me. After all, that's always been true and always will be.

I never said that-- only that the executive bonuses are mostly undeserved and quite frequently not actually linked to any real improvement in the company.

A poorly managed multinational company is still a poorly managed multinational company, regardless of if the investors are fooled for a few months into thinking it's not. The executives should instead be rewarded for turning it into a well managed multinational company.

It's more about "they did a bad job and got rewarded for it" than anything else. I have no problems with a CEO that gets paid well if he's actually doing a good job. Larry Page and Eric Schmidt come to mind.

Melissia wrote:
It's more about "they did a bad job and got rewarded for it" than anything else. I have no problems with a CEO that gets paid well if he's actually doing a good job. Larry Page and Eric Schmidt come to mind.

Larry Page? The CEO of Google? Really?

I think you and I have very different understandings of what constitutes doing a bad job.

Shuma Gorath(?) It's not my plan. There's a whole movement that agrees with it - and they're smart people.

I question that.

You make a series of unsupported assumptions that have no relationship to reality. A large part of the problem is that "politician" was never meant to be a career.

The aristocratic, life long political, and land owning group known as the founding fathers will disagree with you now.

dogma wrote:Larry Page? The CEO of Google? Really?

Google, one of the most successful and fastest growing businesses the world has ever known? Known to be one of the best places in the world to work, known for its customer service and use of creative ideas to provide newer, broader avenues of profits for its shareholders? Not only survived the dot com bubble, but thrived in spite of it, competing even with giants such as Microsoft in every market in which it has decided to enter, often dominating them?

Yes.

Really.

Melissia wrote:

dogma wrote:Larry Page? The CEO of Google? Really?

Google, one of the most successful and fastest growing businesses the world has ever known? Known to be one of the best places in the world to work, known for its customer service and use of creative ideas to provide newer, broader avenues of profits for its shareholders?

Yes.

Really.

Can you actually give a reason as to why they are bad executives? Ones that don't toe the line into fiction and revisionist history preferably.


Hey, no fair, you can't stealth edit and clarify after I've responded to you!

Melissia wrote:Google, one of the most successful and fastest growing businesses the world has ever known? Known to be one of the best places in the world to work, known for its customer service and use of creative ideas to provide newer, broader avenues of profits for its shareholders? Not only survived the dot com bubble, but thrived in spite of it, competing even with giants such as Microsoft in every market in which it has decided to enter, often dominating them?

Yes.

Really.

Ah, I misunderstood your comment. I read that as a negative example.

Anyway, Bill Simon.

dogma wrote:

Andrew1975 wrote:
When a CEO is making 800 times what an average worker does, that has an effect on share returns, no?

Not a material one when spread across a few thousand (in the extreme conservative sense) shares.

Andrew1975 wrote:
Also workers who are treated as chattel are less productive. If you look at he article I posted, you will see some evidence of this when you compare walmart structure to costco.

Sure, that's definitely true, but which company is more valuable?

Valuable to whom?

Employees? Yes

Investors? Yes
"None of this has been lost on the investment community. At nearly $58, Costco trades for 22 times fiscal 2007 projected earnings of $2.58 a share. It has one of the highest price-earnings ratios among major retailers. Target (TGT, news, msgs) shares, at nearly $63, trade for 17 times estimated 2007 earnings, while Wal-Mart, at $48, commands 15 times projected 2007 profits.

Though some retailing analysts deem Costco shares expensive, the company seems to qualify under one of Buffett's investment dictums. Buffett has said he'd rather buy a good business at fair price than a fair business at a good price. Berkshire owned 5 million Costco shares at the end of September."

Consumers? Yes

Blood sucking CEOs? Probably not, good thing they don't have one.

Dogma, I'm genuinely impressed with you lately no silly word games. I mean if I had asked a value question in the past, not only would you question value to whom, but gone on some strange existential tangent about what is value. Much more enjoyable lately.

Andrew1975 wrote:
"None of this has been lost on the investment community. At nearly $58, Costco trades for 22 times fiscal 2007 projected earnings of $2.58 a share. It has one of the highest price-earnings ratios among major retailers. Target (TGT, news, msgs) shares, at nearly $63, trade for 17 times estimated 2007 earnings, while Wal-Mart, at $48, commands 15 times projected 2007 profits.

There are also about 5 times as many shares of Walmart as Costco.

dogma wrote:

Andrew1975 wrote:
"None of this has been lost on the investment community. At nearly $58, Costco trades for 22 times fiscal 2007 projected earnings of $2.58 a share. It has one of the highest price-earnings ratios among major retailers. Target (TGT, news, msgs) shares, at nearly $63, trade for 17 times estimated 2007 earnings, while Wal-Mart, at $48, commands 15 times projected 2007 profits.

There are also about 5 times as many shares of Walmart as Costco.

Sure, but you still would have made more if you invested a set amount of money in costco over walmart. Walmart and all it's assets are a much larger operation, but bigger isn't necessarily better.

Andrew1975 wrote:

dogma wrote:

Andrew1975 wrote:
"None of this has been lost on the investment community. At nearly $58, Costco trades for 22 times fiscal 2007 projected earnings of $2.58 a share. It has one of the highest price-earnings ratios among major retailers. Target (TGT, news, msgs) shares, at nearly $63, trade for 17 times estimated 2007 earnings, while Wal-Mart, at $48, commands 15 times projected 2007 profits.

There are also about 5 times as many shares of Walmart as Costco.

Sure, but you still would have made more if you invested a set amount of money in costco over walmart. Walmart and all it's assets are a much larger operation, but bigger isn't necessarily better.

Price per share isn't indicative of profitability for an investor. A ten percent stock increase is a ten percent increase, regardless of whether or not the shares are two dollars two two hundred. If you have ten grand invested you're at 11 in the end regardless. There is also a consistent fear of sudden devaluations when a stocks price gets too high making investors wary of "highest indexed price" companies in their respective fields. It leads to the belief that there is no where to go but down (because it's typically true). When companies get that valuable per share they usually split the shares, devaluing them and increasing the numeric number held by investors.

Andrew1975 wrote:
Sure, but you still would have made more if you invested a set amount of money in costco over walmart. Walmart and all it's assets are a much larger operation, but bigger isn't necessarily better.

P/E ratios don't indicate the earnings of shareholders. They indicate the price of units of production (measured in currency) for the company in question. So new companies that are promising, like Costco, will often see elevated P/E ratios due to demand caused by investors trying to get in early.