The New York Times (NY Times) published an article following the
up-roar over the subsidised AIG company management bonuses of 165 Million$ which they describe as "small change."
NY Times article published under the header, "The Fine Art of Political Distraction" and republished by the french newspaper Le Monde in their weekend supplement in english, Sat. 28 March 2009.
Could the NY Times and Le Monde be the real culprits guilty of Distraction?
Bonuses for Management of what? Gigantic Budgets! Seriously or Tongue in cheek sarcasm?
The small change comment arises from comparisons with
1. Announced US budget 787 Billion $ to boolster economic recovery (of which the sustainability remains, largely, to be defined not to mention proven I believe)
2. Add to this 700 Billion $ to "shore-up" (pun on the the rising sea level warnings?) shaky financial institutions.
Let's see:
-787 Billion $ = 787 000 OOO OOO$ (in US and most commonly used Scientific Community units)
-700 Billion $ = 700 000 000 000$
165 Million $ = 165 000 000$ or 1/6th of a Billion$ in the AIG bonus package
(How many golden parachutes and golden-handshakes are we focusing on at AIG and Assocs and what is the spread from maximum eg. 16 guys at 10M$ and 1 at 0.5M$ to some other hand-out? ).
NY Times describes AIG as a shaky financial Institution dare we repeat this?
How many other Financial Institutions are involve in such hand-outs
700 000 000 000 / 165 000 000 = 700 000 / 165 = 4242.42 approximately 4000.
What is clear is that the concentration of wealth continues to be "highly concentrated" whatever the calculation method used.
How many shaky financial institions are in the so called Gravey Queue. 4000 ? More? Less? And to what extent? AIG and they are not alone is the standard (International Standards Organisation ISO for the engineers amoung us) . There are several examples. It's a pity I did not take a hear count. It does very look easy to shallow up huge budgets (such as hundreds of billions of US$)
I am no expert in these matters which is certainly why I and the rest of the world are asking such questions.
One theme that has seldom emerged is "what if the bills are paid by the often longstanding highly paid directors of these financial institutions," by definition people with a good credit rank- and credit allowed at much lower rates than the general public-the famous "Joe Blog." One observer insists that neither the general public- (payers) nor the politicians who must study,legislate-decide have not a clue (like me) as to how banks work (surely an understatement if ever there was one) This observer whose name and references I did not scribble down at the time, considers that, yes indeed, the leading Bankers should foot the bill by through re-lending to their institution their "hard earned capital". At a guess I would say this must amount to roughly "700 Billion US$ in the USA alone) Through time and if they correct their past errors, these "managers" will in a relatively short time recover much of their re-investment. I'll let the specialists do some calculations on the return on capital through compound interest rates.
Still what on earth will our huge earners do with such massive capital remains to be seen. We know by now what our pollution and GHG emissions records are.
One group Forbes appears to have an idea. Some billionaires offer job?
a) The World's Billionaires
Edited by Luisa Kroll, Matthew Miller and Tatiana Serafin, 03.11.09
b) The Jobs?
Do the numbers of Jobs Offered balance Jobs Lost, Job Seekers? This must wait for some more enquiries and some very simple calculations.
A last quote (and two links) from J-M Jancovici and Grandjean:
"Human Economy is essentially about how mankind transforms limited natural resources to make useful desirable products and services."
[Link1] and [Link2].
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