HBO Blogosphere — 3/19/09

11 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

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  jreighley on March 19 at 2:56 p.m.

  The company is not in the toilet. If the Government wanted them bankrupt, they should have let them go bankrupt. The company was important enough that the government decided they should not go bankrupt.

  Companies that are not bankrupt have an obligation to pay people as promised.

  In this case it wasn’t even all that unreasonable.. These where not performance bonuses, they where retention bonuses.

  The employees worked for an unprofitable division that was being shut down. They had no job future at the company, but the company still needed people to sell off the business, and deal with the day to day business until it could shut to doors… So they promised these employees that if they stayed on board for a certain amount of time, they would be payed a bonus. The employees stayed aboard. They fulfilled their end of the bargain. It is absolutely wrong that anyone should suggest that they shouldn’t be paid. They where shutting down and selling off a bad business that the taxpayers own 80% of. This bonus was a reward for killing off their own jobs. If they had all bailed out the first notice that their unit was going to be shut down, there would be nobody to shut it down, and there would have been an even bigger mess…

  Yes, some of them are highly paid… Probably not all of them.. They probably aren’t highly paid because they are greedy either.. Most Execs I see earning High 6 and low 7 figure incomes earn that much because they don’t need to work, and the company is desparate to keep them on board, buying them out of their well earned golfing and beach house dwelling years.

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  christywoolum on March 19 at 4:54 p.m.

  How many bonuses have I gotten? Zip, zero in my whole working life.

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  hmoffsuite on March 19 at 5:10 p.m.

  jreighley >> Yes, some of them are highly paid… Probably not all of them.. They probably aren’t highly paid because they are greedy either..”

  These hightly paid guys are in a chosen career that is highly competitive. Most have several years of education in the best institutions in the country. The best schools. They have excelled in their careers and rise to the top. Just like the sports stars. In many cases, the compensation is obscene. Especially considering the results some achieve. Both execs and athletes. Professional entertainers are about the same.

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  Stickman on March 19 at 8:50 p.m.

  I once got a free turkey, but since I was a vegetarian, not much good. Oh well, such is life.

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  cantyoureadthesigns on March 19 at 11:46 p.m.

  jreighley on March 19 at 2:56 p.m.

  Thank you for your well reasoned and thoughtful post, which is quite in contrast to the vehement screaming by the hoi polloi.

  I’m not agreeing with all of your analysis, without further checking, but if what you say is true, then there is at least some logical basis for these bonuses.

  I was against the bailout in the first place, but we’re kind of stuck, now, between a rock and a hard place. And there are a HUGE amounts of financial shenanigans and fraud that need to be unwound, and it will come at a high cost.

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  Arch_Druid on March 20 at 10:43 a.m.

  The only flaw in jreighley’s argument was that a retention bonus was also paid to people no longer employed by the firm. I don’t think that can be justified.

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