How can these Bank People not GET it?
From CNN:
Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit reminded the committee that he canceled an order for a $50 million jet last month because it seemed unseemly just after his company received $45 billion from the government.
“We understand the old model doesn’t work,” Pandit said, adding that he’s cut his own salary to $1 until Citicorp returns to profitability. “We did not adjust quickly enough to this new world. Let me be clear to the committee: I get the new reality.”
He would have been blind and deaf to have missed it. Citigroup canceled the jet order after none other than President Barack Obama pressured them to nix the “outrageous” expenditure.
What about Citicorp’s other jets and those owned by the other banks?“You could sell them” and use the money to reimburse taxpayers, commented Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif. “The big show of not buying one particular type of new plane flies in the face of how you’re really flying.”
No one took him up on the suggestion.
I hate to, once again, use profanity, but Pankit’s statement about not adjusting quick enough floors me, so I have to simply say:
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
When someone yells fire in a crowded movie theatre, you either run for the exits or get a bucket of water. Based on the way these guys have managed their banks, they’ve been stopping the guy with the water to take a long, relaxing drink. How many people need to be burned until these guys understands that their privileged little world isn’t the world the rest of us live in? How many will die of smoke inhalation until they realize the money they received is the money of those who’ve lost money with them and is NOT for their personal needs or the old, confortable ways of doing business.
I’m always at a loss when institutions and corporations hire incompetents so routinely. Is it that there is a certain level of privileged society where the networks are much smaller and the failures of these individuals is stiffled by the awe of their previous positions. In Hollywood, if you’ve gotten a screenplay produced - even a piece of shit that fails at the box office - you are more likely than a brilliant novice to get your next project going. Simply put, you’re in the club.
Well, the club should now be under scrutiny by the public. We need to humiliate these people. It may be the only thing they understand. But this week’s humiliation is really not enough. It needs to be constant. Five years from now, people need to remember the name Vikram Pandit and know that he’s not even worthy of being in charge of the french fry bin at Burger King.
