The Icepick Cometh

I'm no economist. But if you make a bad deal as a homeowner, it's too bad on you. If you make a bad deal and you're Bear Stearns, then the Gov't gets to bail you out, even if it did a shitty job itself?

OK, that said, Win Ben Stein's Money column in Sunday's Times about executive pay is interesting. To quote:

In other words, it’s not a pretty picture. It shrieks greed and contempt for shareholders and workers. …

Now we come to a sad fact about modern American life. It was brought up by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who often said that America, through its technology, has made of itself a neighborhood, but not a brotherhood. It is a lot worse now. The nation has become, to some at the top, far more of a looting opportunity than a family.

I am not sure where this has come from — maybe from media that glamorize wealth and high-end consumption, maybe from poor moral training.

Or maybe it's now that the Baby Boomers, into their 60's and 50's and fully running the country, can set their own level of greed and continue on their course to justify their own ambitions and world view, while socking it to the next generation. Thanks, Greedy Ones!

Ah, the Boomers. Here's a completely unscientific (but revealing, to my mind) example: after a quick search and some math on three Executives cited early in the Sunday Times' story on Big Pay for Big Shots — Lawrence J. Ellison of Oracle, Alan G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble and Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs — reveal ages of roughly 63, 61 and 53, respectively. Those are the prime birth years of the Baby Boomers: 1945 to 1955.