From the category archives:

U.S. Congress

One CEO to Go, Please.

June 17, 2010

When he became BP’s CEO in 2007, Tony Hayward was quoted as saying that he would focus on safety matters like a laser.  But his mind-blowing evasiveness and complete failure to show what he did in that regard before a frustrated Congressional Committee proved he could not muster the intensity of a bathroom nightlight. America, [...]

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Goldman’s Exhibits of Wall Street Insincerity

April 28, 2010

Collectively, in their pivotal appearance before Congress, Goldman’s top performers could not muster the sincerity, transparency or gravitas of a used car salesman.  It is unlikely to play well on Main Street. Nothing illustrates the folly and arrogance of Wall Street more than the appearance of the Goldman Sachs executives who testified yesterday before the [...]

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It’s Morning in a Healthier America

March 23, 2010

The day health care reform and universal coverage moved from a noble dream to the law of the land. Every few decades, America takes a momentous turn in reaffirming what it stands for and how it treats its citizens.  This happened with the enactment of Social Security in the 1930s and with Medicare and the [...]

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Bonfire of the Insanities: An Essay on AIG and Wall Street’s Culture of Entitlement

March 21, 2009

AIG’s bonuses have become more than just a tipping point for a long simmering resentment over executive compensation.  They have become an entire gravitational force field of umbrage at the greed, arrogance and now horrifically costly stupidity on the part of these Wall Street masters of the universe, as they preferred to be called in times [...]

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The Lehman CEO as Superman, and Other Myths in an Era of Underwhelming and Overpaid Leaders

October 8, 2008

When the market is going up, much of the world treats CEOs like superheroes who are worth every penny of the extraordinary sums they command. But when fate and fortune retreat and reverse direction, these CEOs suddenly claim only to be human, an attribute with which they had previously never shown much familiarity. It was, [...]

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The Day Wall Street and Main Street Collided

September 30, 2008

The public rarely likes to be hoodwinked or dismissed; their ire is almost certain to be raised when they believe their pockets are being picked in the process. Somewhere at the intersection of Wall Street greed and tone deaf political acumen you will find the shattered remains of the $700 billion Bush-Paulson bailout plan. It [...]

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Subprime Debacle Needs Congressional Spotlight, and So Do the Regulators Who Let it Happen

May 2, 2008

Investigations by Congress in 1912, 1932 and 2002 revealed weaknesses and abuses in both the regulatory regime and in the governance of corporations that yielded major reforms. A comparable effort is needed now in the face of the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression. A trio of former SEC chairmen and a solo performance [...]

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Did Bear Stearns Really Have a Board? | Part 1

March 25, 2008

How this 85-year-old icon of Wall Street was governed was also a clue as to how it might fail. When rumors were circling the company and threatening its survival, it responded by issuing a strong statement denying liquidity problems. The board agreed. But astonishingly, the company disintegrated less than 48 hours later and was quickly [...]

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Outrage of the Week: When Subprime CEOs Dissemble Before Congress

March 9, 2008

Never in modern business has so much been given to so few for such colossally failed results. In just five years, these three CEOs made more than $460 million while leading their companies into the greatest losses in their history. One of them, Charles O. Prince of Citigroup, even got a bonus of $10 million, [...]

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