There’s been a ton of coverage of bonuses being distributed to people in the financial services industry in light of the way many people at these firms screwed up royally and the fact that the U.S. government and taxpayers have had to inject billions of dollars to recapitalize the institutions. Many people in the industry don’t understand the political fallout, and most people can’t understand the hubris of the executives like at AIG and other places. I work in the financial services industry, but am far from the top of the house that makes the big money. Perhaps I can explain for both sides…
To the common person who makes far less than the average Wall Street executive, understand that bonuses are part-and-parcel of one’s annual salary. I work for a bank, but owned by a foreign parent, so, we have not partaken of the TARP funding although my bank has taken billions in recapitalization funds from its own government, and when I came to this bank, the management refused to match my salary from my previous employer, with the understanding that bonuses were expected to average around 10% of salaries annually. So, I actually took a slight pay cut to work where I do due to family and other issues – preference for the job here; less travel meaning more time with family, etc.
My first calendar year at the bank; the bank did well, and so did I getting a very nice bonus. My first full year, however, was a tougher one for the bank, and my bonus that year was less than the bonus I earned for only four months the previous year, and I did get a very good employee appraisal each year. Lots of people got poor bonuses that year, and griped about it, loudly. People were pissed off for months; I commented to one woman on her new window office and she said that she paid for it with her bonus (or lack thereof.
I should explain that I spent almost 15 years with the Federal Reserve Bank, where we were underpaid compare to other bank regulators, and bonuses were unheard of. It just wasn’t the mindset of the organization. So, even though I was a little hurt by the smaller bonus, I wasn’t counting on anything, so I wasn’t pissed off.
The next year was another decent one for the bank, and my managers knew that I had done a really excellent job, so I received a very nice bonus. Most of it went into The Indignant Older Daughter’s college savings.
This past year, of course, was murder for so many financial institutions, and bonuses were eliminated and small increases were promised for the future – to be distributed over the next three years – 2010, 2011, and 2012. While I expected no bonus this year, I must admit that the pittance promised over the three year period is so small that I wish our management just said “we’ll see how 2010, 2011, and 2012 is and if we can, we’ll make it up to you.” But in this unusually bad economic climate, having a job is the best thing possible, so again, I’m not too angry.
Now, for the people in the financial services industry who can’t understand why people are starting to make bankers out as the bad guys, let me put it to you this way. There was an underrated film from 1982 called “Blue Thunder.” It was the story of a Vietnam vet turned LAPD helicopter pilot and a plot to use military helicopters to combat common criminals. Anyway, the film starred Roy Schneider and was Warren Oates’ last performance. Oates played Schneider’s boss, and when Schneider got in trouble, Oates told him “when you’re walking on eggs, don’t hop!”
Our industry is “walking on eggs,” and so, we can’t hop. It is obvious that scores of supposedly intelligent people allowed their greed to go too far, and it helped get us into this global financial mess that we’re in. But to accept taxpayer money, then award these same people who screwed up in the first place millions of dollars in annual bonuses is crazy to the average guy. Yes, it takes a lot of money to live in Manhattan, and yours is a stressful, often 80 to 100 hour-per-week job, and you give up family time and other important things to do your job. But, it’s time to “take one for the team.” Like I said earlier, I understand no bonuses for us this year, that’s fine, but then again, I don’t expect that money, and don’t make plans for it. Maybe it’s time to do what so many other people are being forced to do – live within your means. So you can’t purchase your annual Mercedes this year; last year’s one is probably still running fine.
The worst offender appears to be JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Chase has taken in $25 billion of the government bailout, but the bank is spending millions on what it calls, the most up-to-date fleet of executive aircraft anywhere. But Dimon was quoted as saying a few weeks ago that he couldn’t understand why bankers were being vilified so. Because you’re buying airplanes while taking taxpayer funds and foreclosing on people, that’s why.
It has been said that CEOs have the morals of sociopaths (definition – unconcerned about the consequences {particularly adverse consequences} for others of one’s actions). It appears that most of the executives of financial services companies have similar qualities.

It’s bad enough that they run a dying station, but the powers-that-be behind the scenes aren’t even original (and maybe that’s the problem).
Ever since this year’s Grammy Awards when Robert Plant and Alison Krauss won numerous awards for their hybrid CD “Raising Sand,” suddenly, listeners are starting to hear more of Plant’s old band, a “little known group” called Led Zeppelin.
WXRT used to stay as far away from “The Hammer of the Gods” to differentiate itself from The Loop, and the other hard rock stations, but suddenly, Plant is “cool” again, and since they tried to add more Aerosmith to the station playlist about 1 year ago to no good purpose and a collective yawn from the listeners, now they are playing Led Zeppelin.
Ah the days when the programming decisions were truly progresive, brave and daring…

A tragic consequence of the economic downturn is that the lives at the bottom of the economic ladder get more desperate and people start dying even more frequently.
What do I mean? The local Chicago media is counting all of the Chicago Public School students who have died violently since the school year began in September. The number currently stands at 29, a record.
Not tying to be callous, I used to ask where the parents were, because, in the past, you would hear about kids getting killed at 2:30 AM or other late night/early morning time when kids shouldn’t be hanging out in the first place. This is not blaming the victims, this is asking what kind of parent would allow their kids to be outside late at night. I grew up in the Englewood neighborhood and I never saw outside much past the street lamps coming on until I reached high school, and was never hanging out past 10 PM.
But the current wave of violence is happening at all times of day, often when kids are on their way home from school, on a bus, or other places in broad daylight. In these instances, the parents can’t be blamed, and despite what some knee-jerk morons think, it is not the school’s job to watch kids outside of the school grounds. That is simply beyond its mandate. Besides, the schools have a hard enough time keeping campuses safe.
What can be done? What should be done? There will be more marches by local churches; more lobbying the state legislature (like they can do anything with the cloud of corruption hanging over them and a huge budget shortfall). Mayor Daley will talk; the CEO of the public schools will come up with another program, but it will all fall short until a few things happen.
First, there has to be found industries and corporations that need lower skilled workers. With the auto industry in the tank, and many of those jobs moved overseas, the people at the bottom have no realistic job prospects. Without that, the same hopelessness-government aid-low self and human esteem continues. And with this low value of life both personally and in general, killing people is just like stomping ants.
Perhaps President Obama will begin to discuss the ways to correct the problem. Just his being elected shows young black youth that it’s OK to aspire to greatness; it’s cool to be intelligent; people of color can “make it.” Unfortunately, it may not help the current generation. What do we do for them? Do we have armed guards take every student home? Not feasible financially; nor desirable in a “free society.” Maybe it’s time to take all of the gangbangers and instead of putting them in jail, ship them all to Three Mile Island, or some other place no one wants, and let them survive like animals – “Lord of the Flies” style? An easier way would be to get rid of all of the guns, but the Red Neck NRA wouldn’t like that.
A watched a little of Will Farrell’s hilarious George W. Bush stage show on HBO the other night (and I am NOT a Will Farrell fan), and he did say something that was all too true. He mentioned that rapper Kanye West said that Bush hated black people; Farrell-as-Bush said that he disagreed, “he just didn’t think about black people.” And that is another attitude that has to change. These are not sub-human slime being murdered almost daily, these are kids, good, bad, and in between being slaughtered because no one gives a damn. When is that going to stop? When we accept them into our shared community mentally, financially, and every other way including having high expectations of them, something may finally give…

Shooting from the hip on so many different things:

• I never met Natasha Richardson, and know of her only on film, but I did bump (literally) into Liam Neeson at the premiere of a film he was in, “Breakfast on Pluto” at the Toronto International Film Festival several years ago, and he was a very nice man. I am saddened for him, their two teenaged sons, and the rest of their family at Ms. Richardson’s untimely death after suffering head injuries in a skiing accident. A true shame.

• The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament starts today, and I know that people at my work probably think that I took today off to watch basketball, but life is not nearly as interesting. I’m at home looking after The Indignant Oldest daughter who has a stomach ache and spent last night and this morning throwing up. There was a day when I would have taken today and tomorrow off to watch basketball, but it’s not that I’m an old, respectable father. It’s simply that basketball is boring to me and has been for several years,

• Former Vice President Dick Chaney came out from under his rock this week to say that President Obama is opening up the country to another terrorist attack because he has ended the Bush Administration’s torture tactics on suspects. In fact, the stand has started to bring some moral authority and has probably reduced the risk of terror by eliminating yet another reason Islamists have to hate us. Dick, crawl back in your cave and hope that the process server from the Hague with the war crimes indictment can’t find you.

• A couple of days ago, Cubs star pitcher, the mercurial Carlos Zambrano was interviewed by the Chicago Sun-Times and said that if he weren’t a Cub (with a long term contract), he would want to play for the White Sox, his childhood favorite. As a Sox fan, Carlos, stay on the North Side – one highsprited, opinionated Latin is enough (Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen).

• Only people who have no idea about reality question the AIG bonuses. As a person who will not be getting a raise this year, I have little sympathy for the executives of AIG and other companies being bailed out by the U.S. Government, taking their last raids at the company coffers. That idiot on CNBC who ranted about not wanting to help regular people having problems with their house payments is the same one saying that these bonuses valued at millions are peanuts compared with the billions being given to the companies in the bailout and we shouldn’t be upset about them. Well, AIG’s executives were given $161 million in bonuses, which, from my way of thinking adds up to 3,220 people earning $50,000 apiece. That might be 3,220 less houses in foreclosure; 3,220 less people in financial difficulty. That’s what bothers people, you moron!

WXRT radio in Chicago did something cool yesterday, they dedicated the entire day’s programming to U2 who were in town to appear at The Metro to conduct an interview/guest DJ in support of their new CD No Line On The Horizon. But, in a related story, midday DJ Terri Hemmert faced a medical emergency.
Ms. Hemmert is, arguably, Chicago’s biggest Beatles fan, hosting “Breakfast with the Beatles” on Sunday mornings and having a VERY liberal amount of Beatle group and solo music on her show. Well, for the first time in her 35 years on the air, she was unable to play any Beatle music. For the first hour, everything sounded fine, but in the second hour, her breathing sounded more labored, and staff workers said that she was breaking out in a sweat, began to turn pale and muttering “Paul” over and over under her breath.
In the last hour, she tried to play U2’s cover of The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” repeatedly until bosses rushed the studio and changed to another U2 song. By the end of the show, an ambulance was called and as the paramedics were trying to stabilize her condition, she could only be calmed down by having cold Beatle albums placed on her head and McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs” played repeatedly in the ambulance. She was treated and released from a nearby hospital, but the ambulance workers were treated for sugar-overdoses and remain on suicide watch.
Ms. Hemmert returned to the station today and promptly began boring her limited audience by playing The Beatles for the 14 trillionth time.

(Just kidding. Thanks to Wendi Walker for the idea)

It is surprising that NHL general managers, many of whom are former players themselves, are trying to eliminated or reduce fighting. They should know better, and the game of hockey includes fighting.
The GM’s are recommending a rule change that would give a 10-minute misconduct penalty to players who fight immediately after a faceoff. In addition, the 10-minute misconduct could also be applied to any other fight a referee believes was staged. In staged fights, there is an unspoken understanding between teams allowing players to “throw down their gloves” and tangle with each other.
The general managers were interviewed yesterday, the second day of their annual meetings. Their recommendations would have to be approved by the NHL’s competition committee and Board of Governors before the 2009-10 season.
A few years ago, I read a book called The Code: The Unwritten Rules Of Fighting And Retaliation In The NHL by Ross Bernstein (Author), and although I had watched hockey for years, I never knew how formal the rules were for fighting. To protect your mates, to gain respect for yourself on the ice, or just to turn around momentum and gain a spark for your team, fighting is a long established part of the game. The NHL has taken some steps to reduce fighting, but the league has always walked a very thin line on the subject since many fans are excited by fights (including The Indignant Wife), and the league doesn’t want to alienate the paying customers by eliminating fights.
Nor should they. As I said, hockey is a game of hitting and being hit; and sometimes, people have to pay for transgressions – lie rushing your best player, or the smaller guys, or roughing up goalies. If NHL officials didn’t suck so badly for decades, the players wouldn’t have to fight, but most of the referees see the easy penalties, and miss the more difficult calls. If NHL officials weren’t so arbitrary, biased, and just plain incompetent, hockey players wouldn’t need to resort to self-regulation – where referees and rules apparently can’t be trusted to regulate the game, and players take the matter into their own hands, by responding to a hit with a fight.
I believe that if you just want to watch people skating fast, go to see speed skating.
The GMs did make one point that I do agree with however. They recommended limiting fighting in response to a clean hit, by calling the instigator penalty more aggressively. The league has reportedly seen an increase in violent reactions to clean hits.
I don’t understand fighting after clean hits, but for thuggery that the referees don’t, can’t, or won’t call a penalty, the players have to mete out punishment. The GM’s should leave well enough alone, especially since they and the league can’t afford to drive away the casual fan, especially in an economic recession. I’m not calling for a return to the “bad ole’ days” when you went to the fights and a hockey game broke out. We have a good balance where the best players get the room to show off their superior skills, and there are fights for justice on the ice, and enjoyment of the fans in the stands. Isn’t that what we all want?

My day started in fine fashion. The family were sleepy, but got up, and the Indignant Daughters were in fine moods. Taking them to day care took a little longer than normal (Victoria had to “sign” her name – print and she took to the task like archeologists working on the Dead Sea Scrolls). Then, the Indignant Wife and I tried to go south. Usually, Lake Shore Drive takes 30-45 minutes to get in from day care, but today it was almost 2 hours. Why? Repair work on catch basins forced not one (like yesterday, which slowed things down), but two lanes were closed this morning. This not only caused LSD to grind to a halt, but all main north-south streets were clogged as people (like myself) tried to stay off the Drive.
ChicagoTribune.com posted “Work on the catch basins, which drain water from the roadway after storms, was delayed by Tuesday night’s rain, causing more daytime lane closures than expected, said Chicago Department of Water Management spokesman Tom LaPorte. As a result, two lanes remained closed this morning between Belmont and Diversey Avenues as concrete poured overnight was allowed to dry, LaPorte said. One of those lanes was scheduled to be opened by 1 p.m., he said, and all lanes should be open by 5 a.m. Thursday.”
Of course, we know that the lanes won’t open until 7:30 AM tomorrow because these jackasses don’t know what the hell they’re doing. I barely made a meeting because these men, who probably got their jobs not because they have any ability, but because they give kickbacks to elected officials, closed two lanes during midweek rush hour. And I wasn’t the last person in my office to get to work; I saw five more people coming into work pissed off because of the delay.
I have an idea that will stop this. Let’s have this LaPorte bozo and whoever planned this work and allowed it to stop rush hour traffic to stand right where the lane work begins and allow us to yell, scream, honk, at these jackasses. I have wanted to find out for a long time EXACTLY who was responsible for the seemingly thoughtless, nonsensical ways that street and highway construction was planned in this country, city and state, and publish their phone and/or e-mail addresses on the contraction projects they plan. If people could call, or from their Blackberries e-mail these assholes and hold them directly responsible for the traffic tie-ups they cause, I guarantee, the number of construction projects and the amount of time wasted due to them would fall drastically.