Recent Comments

• John Sinteur on Yugo, 1953-2008 Have you seen how much money Europe is sending to struggling car manufacturers, including subsidiaries of GM?
• Maarten on Yugo, 1953-2008 "We"? I didn't know you were going to help out! That's sweet of you.
• Bill L. on Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds I've never, n-e-v-e-r had to be at an airport 2 hours early. I've often wandered in with less than 40 minutes to my flight. Are we guessing that they have lots of luggage to check in and haven't bothered to check-in electronically? Southwest, business select, one way, out one day and back the next, is $176 X 12 = 2,112. Not exactly 12 grand. 12k only pans out if you assume they "have" to travel first class. The shortest flight listed is about 1 hour and 24 minutes. Ohh noes! How will they avoid spilling the corporate beans for nearly an eternity! Are we to think that all the execs traveled on the same plane? Jet-pooling?
• John Sinteur on Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds You're forgetting one major cost factor: public image. This story is all over the news. At the cost of two or three extra hours, their image could have been one of real "cost-sensitve" CEO's. Isn't that really worth it? And any CEO not aware of public image is too stupid to be in that job.
• Jason on Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds How much time is lost by the GM representatives when they have to check in for a flight two hours early, or when the GM representatives are not to talk about business during the flight due to insider trading concerns? The question is what is lost? When 12 people fly on a private jet it costs about $20,000. When 12 fly commercially to DC it costs about $12,000. Is a $8,000 savings worth the time lost? Isn’t it really worth it in the long run? http://nomedals.blogspot.com
• Roland Hesz on Cartoons The iCar is cool :)) Never crashes :) But runs only on GM approved fuel, runs with GM approved tires, and only on roads in GM approved countries and states. And everywhere differently. :)
• Roland Hesz on Consider This…The Stupidest Exercise Machine You’ll Ever See Yep, the Flinstone mobile :) One advantage: you can walk and not get mud and snow on your shoes.
• Roland Hesz on Yang’s Exit Opens Door for Fresh Microsoft Bid, Investors Say If I remember correctly Steve Ballmer answered Jerry Yang's plea with a "sorry, that train has left the station".
• John Sinteur on AIG to Pay Millions To Top Workers Don't sweat it - that will likely happen again :-)
• Roland Hesz on Phil Gramm, Unswayed Champion of Deregulation Funny thing that several studies concluded that those banks that lent under the Community Reinvestment Act has "practiced a stricter control over loans, than those who did not participate in the CRA". So banks lending under CRA made way better and more secure loans than those who just lent as a daily business.
• Roland Hesz on AIG to Pay Millions To Top Workers Yes, I heard it a few times too - no christmas bonus. Most of the time the question of bonus never arose in the first place. On the other hand the bonus for me is above my salary. For sales people it is not. Their base salary is pretty low to motivate them. I get your argument, we have a difference of opinions in this case I'm afraid :)
• John Sinteur on AIG to Pay Millions To Top Workers If I had a dollar for every time I heard a company say "the past year has been very bad, there will be no christmas bonus this year" I could buy you enough beer to discuss this all evening long. Why would these guys be any different? Their company is so close to bankruptcy, they have to borrow billions. I stand by my statement.
• Roland Hesz on AIG to Pay Millions To Top Workers I guess if you got part of your salary as bonus, you would say it now: oh, sure, I worked hard, turned out profit, delivered a couple succesful projects, but as others did not, I don't want all of my salary. Don't forget that a big part of the salary of sales people is counted as a performance bonus, and these are the people who can pull the company out of the shit it's in. They are "rewarding" - i.e. giving the agreed upon salary - to the people who actually turned in some profit. If you divide the sum of the bonuses ($503 million) with the number of receivers (6000+) it turns out that they will get $83833.33 on average. That is not a "luxurious" bonus. If you say that's equivalent of 6 months basic salary, then you end up with around $240k per year. You can say it's a lot, but it's not a huge salary at this level. Of course, there will be those who got $50k as a bonus, and those who got $300k. Thing is "performance" bonus is like the tip for the waiters here. It is part of their salary. And not a small part. And this defence comes from a guy who never had any bonuses so far.
• John Sinteur on Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds Gates didn't make his $40b as "compensation in the form of wages or options". He's co-founder, and he saw his initial stock package explode in value. So yes, I'm counting stock grants and stock options - here in the NL stock options are already taxed as income, so there's no problem counting them as income. What I'm not counting is capital gains on stuff people already own, like stock. Just count the stock options at the moment of issue as income, and if converted to stock you never look at it again. I don't think Bill Gates made all that much in salary, and it's not fair to count a rise in stock price against him.
• Maarten on Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds Presumably you're counting stock grants and stock options in that 12X? How do you work with stock that's awarded now but vests and attains its value later? How do you deal with someone like Gates, making billions as the part-owner of a very successful company? Note that Msft actually shared a lot of wealth down the ranks, even if they denied it to some (the "permatemps"), but few made 1/12th of Gates' one-time $40bln.