M-m-m Martha!
Bernie, Bernie, Bernie—what ever are you doing? Don’t you know what CEO means? It means CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER. It means millions in salary and stock. It means power. It means perks. IT DOESN’T MEAN I don’t know or I didn’t understand or I relied on others. A CEO isn’t entitled to STUPID as a defense. S-o-o-o…after they pack you off to ‘the big wieners in the shower club,’ please drop George W’s friend, Kenny Boy, a line and let him know how it works.
Chop Suey! Try a stunt like this in America and someone goes to jail. The cast: Wang, a Chinese investment banker; Fang, Mayor of Beijing; Goldman Sachs, the august New York investment bank; and $200 million good old George Washington’s composed of a $67 million donation to cover losses at a Hainan Securities(a failed Chinese brokerage firm whose officials, apart from possibly having political ties to Wang and Fang, have been accused of embezzling millions from investor accounts), a $100 million loan to Fang (security not disclosed), and $30 million for a 1/3rd stake in a new joint venture with Wang and Fang from which Goldman Sachs who hopes to reap billions.
And then faster than one can skip five fen across the Sea of Japan, Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, the man one Japanese station called more powerful than God (but remember Shinto and Buddhism are Japan’s major religions), gets his butt hauled out of one of his luxury hotels and taken away in a police van for suspicion of insider trading and filing false financial statements. (Martha’s cell is empty.) Can Goldman Sachs be far behind?
South of the border down Argentine way, president Nestor Kirchner gleefully announced restructuring $102.6 billion—B as in billion baby—in bonds mostly held by foreigners. Why the glee? Thirty cents on the dollar, that’s why. And who got stuck holding the bag full of three dimes? Besides retail holders like you and me who didn’t have a prayer, the usual suspects were Switzerland, Italy, United States, Germany and Japan. You don’t like it. Tough. The Argentine Congress passed a law making it illegal to improve the existing terms. People in the business call this sovereign risk—I call it getting screwed. If you don’t understand the language, stay out of the bordello.
Closer to home, across the Potomac from Virginia in that cozy cuckoo’s nest we call Washington, DC, some of the same banks involved in the $70 billion Argentine bath managed to get their rich senator friends to pass a law that prevents you and me from declaring the kind of bankruptcy that lets us dump our lousy credit card debt. Let’s see: how many one-thousand dollar credit card users will they have to sue to get $70 billion? Hmmmm? Seventy with nine zeros divided by one with three zeros equals seventy with six zeros. That’s seventy million poor souls just like you and me.
