I was just saying they would have been better leaders than Obama. I guess I would think that I personally would have 100% of the positions I would want in a president but will concede Obama is a better leader than I would be so I don't know why it is hard to understand why I would think Bush and McCain and Hillary would be better leaders than Obama. None of the four would be near the top of my list by the way. :)

Didn't say that.

I said the most helpful thing for the economy the Obummer could have said last night was "I quit". Ridding the nation of the albatross he represents would do more for consumer confidence than any speech the worthless SOB could give.

That's different than the question you asked me.

You have a lot of faith in Joe Bidden.

Sad but true

At the end of the day, this is how I would be as President (I'm not saying I would be Obama, but similar personality types without the great speaking ability). I'd first try to appeal to the public and opponents with logic (the bully pulpit thing he does so well), have no problems compromising to get everyone on the same page but the moments one of the sides said "Nope, now we want more", I'd be pissed and be groping around in the dark just as he is.

SI

Actually Biden troubles me far more than Obama.

He might actually be capable of getting more of the batshit crazy stuff passed.

I've always wondered how this felt at the time as opposed to after the fact. I have this impression that Kennedy might have been much the same as Obama- stumbling and groping around and just, frankly, too young and inexperienced for the job. However, he could do a great speech and had some progressive ideas. The greatest thing he did to advance his legacy as President was, frankly, to die and have a veteran legislator ram through a bunch of things after his death.

I honestly wonder if the same scenario wouldn't play out now if Obama were assassinated.

SI

+1 This is the genesis of the (public) aggravation factor with Democrats imo as well.

They managed to pass the Stimulus and Health Care bills no problem...what they didnt even consider was that putting people to work en mass so that they could more easily justify a single payer system 2-3 years down the road. But you have to fix the crux of the problem before your pet projects & silly giveaways that don't amount to much. I think the general public saw this as the legislation the Dems pushed through, and punished them for it at the ballot box.

Watch what happens with Obama's jobs bill proposal. If the Repubs sit on their hands here, they too will be voted out to the extent possible.

That's interesting... and not that wrong, IMO.

I get the impression that Obama is the rookie QB with a ton of potential that was drafted by a bad team and was thrown to the wolves. He's David Carr. Had he taken the Aaron Rodgers route of sitting on the bench for a few years (a few terms as Senator), maybe he would have built up influence and sway over Congress before taking the Presidency. When he was elected, it seemed to me like Pelosi and Reid thought they had just been elected President and that they were going to control the direction the government went in.

The Democrats needed a win so they put in the guy they thought had the best chance to win, but for Obama, he really needed a few more terms as Senator, maybe even left the Senate and was Governor of a state for a term or two, before being President. I know the Republicans are stomping their feet, folding their arms and letting the crocodile tears flow until they get their way, but at the same time, Obama seems like he just doesn't know how to get things done.

I don't think they managed to passed the Health Care bill no problem. It took them over a year of negotiating, removing things, and they had to get 60 votes just to get it to the floor for a vote. In fact, I think nearly every appointment or bill has needed 60 votes just to get considered.

Obama has been pushed as a presidential candidate since 2000 or so. He's not a noob here.

Well, I think the perception is that "it got done". Meanwhile, policy which focused on jobs "did not get done" nor did it actually get the full focus that Health Care did.

People are (and were) trying to avoid losing the ability to pay for food & shelter...they'll worry about how they will buy healthcare after they secure the first part. This is the fundamental disconnect I think people feel with all of government, and the Dems under Pelosi/Reid did nothing to change that perception. So its little wonder why they were voted out (imo).

No way. 2004. He wasn't even in the U.S. Senate in 2000. By contrast, Romney has been running for eight years. He's young to the political game by any standard. Doesn't make the criticisms invalid, just trying to clear up the facts here.

I meant what I said. I was working with people around 2000 who were mentioning him as a future president, even as he ended up losing the House election that year. Much like Republicans this year, they were Democrats who hated having to put Gore forth, and were discussing alternatives. Obama wasn't an alternative then, but they saw him as a future candidate with seasoning. Yes, his big speech at the 2004 convention really put him on the map, but he was considered an up-and-comer 4 years earlier.

Barry never would've been elected as an elder statesman. To take your analogy and flip it a bit, he was a stud freshman in college that came to college with a ton of hype. After his 1st year, EVERYONE said he was a lottery pick and after some "pondering" and "speaking with trusted advisers" they realized that he'd never get a bigger payday than he did. So he HAD to declare early for the draft.

Now he's a starter on a veteran team and is expected to lead. But his blockers are aging, his wideouts can't score like they used to and his coaching staff don't really know how to manage him because they're just as new to the pro game as he is.

The shit he ran in college doesn't work in the bigs and so, we're 3 seasons in and everyone is angling to release or trade the guy. There's no franchise QB in the draft and all of the free agents out there come with their own flaws too. Still, it doesn't mean the kid was the right one out of the chute...it was just a timing thing and you had to take him 1.1 when he came out of the draft, there was just too much momentum around him.

He was half-black and articulate and had a great story and wrote a book. They were touting him as a future President in law school too. But the reality and the hyperbole are two completely different things. He wasn't seriously on the public's Presidential radar until 2004 and even then, he was no slam dunk in 2008. A lot conspired to put him forward and a lot of it came from a masterful campaign. He might suck as a President, but boy, he can work the stump like a champ.

But I get your sentiment. So I'll stop now. ;)

You generally can't get elected as president if you've been in a legislature too long. All those votes inevitably include a lot of material for attack ads. If you're in Congress and you want to run you need to do it ASAP. I think that's why Ryan should run now if he has any ambition.

I think Obama is too much of an idealist and not a realistic. He also doesn't seem to grasp how the business world works.

Japan is a good case to study, you can talk about the quality of stimulus there, you can also talk about the failure of bank bailouts. A lot of the crap that happened here had a lot of parallels to bad policy decisions in Japan to save 'Big Money'. For my part the crazy policy not involved around the stimulus was the killer in Japan (they would not let their megacorps fail, or force them to improve)... the stimulus does not even represent a majority of any debt projection. Its like blaming 100% of the problem on 10% of the scenario.

Not that I'm endorsing their particular spending stimulus... just want to have people look at it with a little more perspective. Read any line of discussion you want on Japan stagflation.. conservative, liberal, whatever, and you will find plenty of ammo fired at non-stimulus spending issues (particularly before stimulus spending became a big American buzzword and political dogfight).

This is true, technology can kill jobs as much as create them (overall there should be either a net improvement in resource utilization or standard of living as a result from the increased productivity). One of the problems in the modern economy is more of those cost savings are being thrown into executive compensation than growing the company, or workers, so a few hard working technologists are destroying jobs by the gross because the top class has no real incentive to grow when they are already flush with cash.

I still think overall there is more jobs that need doing and need for technology than there are people employed. If it really is true that we can do more for less, than we should emphasize doing it better and more for less as well. This means a green agenda to cut down on pollution, because if production is unnecessary and jobs are certainly not coming, then we might as well get efficiency so one aspect of the triangle is healthy.

If we had a country with solid infrastructure, inflation under control, and little health depleting externalities around us maybe I'd go more extreme than Jon and argue for euthanizing all the losers because we just don't need them and we want to keep a good ratio of quality to resources. Until then though I'm going to lean towards there is work to be done and we should be finding ways to encourage it.

Besides, population growth trends are slowing world wide in developed countries and even in some undeveloped near-slave states. In the long run the good infrastructure we build now may need to supply a lot smaller growth rate (perhaps even negative), so the cheap labor supply might be something to take advantage of while we have it in the next hundred years. Only scenarios I see beyond that are either utopian or post-apocalyptic (either we solve efficient resource utilization and stabilize standard of living, we start shooting everyone around us to horde cheezos, or technology and standard of living still manage to outpace population growth which I don't think will happen even with declining geometric expansion).

I support his attempt to stimulate jobs in the country.

We need to reward companies for hiring American workers but I would also like to add a penalty to companies that outsource. Get the f****** country working again and back its feet. Reign in CEO salaries that have ballooned to obscene levels while the average workers continue to get hosed.

Goodness knows we can't have relative value playing a role in compensation :rolls eyes:

There's nothing relative between the value of a CEO and the obscene amounts they get paid.

About as close as the value:compensation of the aforementioned "average worker".

Relative value of what? Sitting on their hands? I'm all for good CEOs getting whatever pay they want, but any statistical analysis you do linking CEO pay to company results is laughable.

The disconnect between executive pay and results is farthest than it has ever been, whether it is giant companies or government 'talent', the leadership has been less than shit lately and for a long time before that.

I'm surprised shareholders don't regularly go around half of these places with giant machine guns (of course there are no shareholders these days, only spot price speculators like me and machine ran mutual funds, so I guess there is no one to make a fuss).

Of finding a good one ... which is what every company thinks they have when they hire them. Or at least hopes they have. A good one is worth what they can get, problem is that the batting average of picking good ones sucks.

Meanwhile the average American worker can be replaced by a trained chimp ... and increasingly often seems to be.

Companies are "global" who can relocate and set up wholly-owned subsidiaries at any time, any place. How exactly would you punish them?

We need to fix our trade agreements.

agreed. the actual value of a CEO is horridly overrated. Kinda like a closer in baseball.

Total brainwash here. They are important because they told you they were. The total number of top CEO's is a very small group. Are we believe that they are a small handful of super-geniuses, like they tell us? C'mon, there are literally thousands of people who could do the job effectively. It's not skill, it's all about power, and power consolidation.

Well as far as chimps go, the median is ($31K) the mean ($41K). Those chimp trainers really need to get off their asses. Although I think the cost of your average chimp up front is in the 30K-40K range... maybe the median worker in the USA actually is a trained chimp! The figures are suspiciously close...

As for CEOs probably the average one is worth something, but when they fail they do so at an epic level. The problem is those epic failures have little correlation with salary, and even in some cases overly high salaries link more to failing CEOs than successful ones. (over time... this comes from the agent theory line of thinking where more compensation is either the cause of or a symptom of a CEO in the process of looting a company for 'rents')

A great CEO is worth a billion, and usually if they are that great they can EARN it, not demand it in a golden parachute contract. Most such CEOs don't tend to get shopped around to begin with because they are builders and they stay with companies they found or are heavilly invested in. So the pool of overpaid ninnies is probably quite large, and of course it is because the ones hiring are often ninnies!

Sounds like the alleged value of the "average worker".


Yep, and everybody would like to find one of those.


As if that isn't a skill? Beyond that, the biggest skill that seems to be in short supply is the ability not to fuck up ... that seems to be a rare commodity indeed.

Dola, all of this nitpicking from me is because I'm a stats junkie. Instead of fantasy football I play fantasy businessman... if I don't see positive relationships in the numbers I get jaded, and lately all that red ink out there, and worst the black ink but bad fundamentals the last two years, has me really pissy these days. I really think about half the companies out there should be bought out and broken up for asset value rather than let these asses keep pissing away useful cash, where is Gordon fuckin Gecko when you need him! If only I had billions to play with the fun I could have!

You believe that? CEO's fuck up all the time. Except that all their bonuses are paid upfront and their severance packages are guaranteed. They just go to another company, who doesn't give two shits what they just did, leaving a trail of shit in their paths, that the "average worker" ends up cleaning up.

I thought most CEOs earn the bulk of their compensation through stock options, not upfront bonuses?

I guess not just anybody should be doing that job then.

While we are at it, basketball players and racecar drivers shouldn't make $10M a year either.

Read what I said again, finding one that doesn't is the hard thing. The pay is because you believe/hope that you've found one that won't.

(Hence my comment about the ability to not fuck up being "a rare commodity indeed")

That is true. Puts them in a lower tax bracket and easier to get by a board of directors. It does lead to many running the company for the short term though, and causes huge risks. Just look at pretty much every major financial institution that would have gone under had they not been bailed out. You're talking about businesses that have been run for over 100 years that were destroyed in no time. Just to get a quick up in their stock. No one is in it for the long term and we've seen the results. So many companies have been destroyed over the years.

I do think most are heavily overpaid, but some aren't. What's the value of Steve Jobs? Could Apple pay him an amount over the years that would be equal to his value? Then you have Sam Fuld who basically lost his company hundreds of billions and made $22 million to do it.

The whole CEO compensation process is a scam. First the CEOs hire compensation consultants that shockingly say the guy that hired them should be paid a lot of money. Then the board, full of people that need favors from the CEO, decides the CEO really does deserve the crazy compensation suggested by the consultants. The next CEO hires the same consultants who now say that this guy deserves 10% more than the last guy since he's obviously better. The board doesn't want to lose a guy that's better than the competition's guy, so they agree.

Rinse and repeat.

Personal knowledge?

I can't speak for JPhillips, but I'm no CEO or compensation consultant. However, I do remember a congressional hearing a while back and dug up the link:

House Panel Finds Conflicts in Executive Pay Consulting - New York Times

From the article: "The committee report stated that the study’s findings were not proof of a causal relationship between higher executive pay and a possibly conflicted consultant. But it indicated that further investigation of the relationships was merited. " So, not conclusive but it looked like a pretty convenient coincidence.

SI

I meant to say "the bulk of their compensation" in my original post. As for the value of CEO, it's hard to judge. I have no problem in paying for someone who delivers a successful company. The problem with public companies is that investors expect short-term returns, with little regard for long-term success.

The "eat the rich" mentality always cracks me up especially when these same board members always tell me when I post Libertarian views that if I don't like it get one of my guys elected. Don't like the CEO pay then buy stock in the company and vote him out. It's the shareholders that agree to pay these guys the salaries. Another choice...stop doing business with Nike or Fedex or Coca Cola. System broken? Where have I heard that before. LOL.

EDIT: Shareholders who elect board of directors who pay CEO before someone nitpicks.

Yeah.

A few lifetimes ago I worked as a paralegal for a few corporate defense firms. One case I worked on concerned a very public CEO that was fired and given an enormous compensation on the way out. In going through documents the system I described was clearly seen as the norm both for this company and other companies connected through board members. Even the SEC saw nothing wrong with the general process, although they argued the amount was too high. I read email after email from corporate bigwig board members and former government official board members. They never questioned the total compensation because the consultants, hired by the CEO, had a fancy presentation that "proved" this was a reasonable compensation package. It was only after the compensation became public knowledge that the board members started doing their jobs an examining the compensation package.

I don't care about it as long as my tax dollars don't have to support the company through credits and bailouts. If you're paying your CEO $30 million, you really don't need government handouts.

Life must be pretty nice in free-market fantasy world. We had the discussion pages ago, I feel, but you do realize corporate governance has enormous agency problems, right? Running a proxy fight cost a lot of money. Even if you wanted to vote a director out, you'd pay 100% of the cost, but only get a slice of the benefits. For most investors, it's not worth it (and collective-action problems, among other things, prevent groups of shareholders from collaborating). Directors and executives exploit this situation for their own benefit. (In addition, the largest investors are often institutional funds, run by managers that have incentives to keep pay for these types of people high.)

To JP's point, it's fairly well known that when the SEC required the disclosure of executive compensation-hoping to shame companies into reining in executive pay-it actually increased pay. Rather than shame it executives, it gave them away to justify ever-higher compensation packages.

Mark Cuban has actually talked a lot about this. His take is interesting. Bunch of rich funds buy in to a company. They bring a guy in, pay him huge bonuses for making short term moves to raise the stock (layoffs, etc). Then they cash out and leave the remains to others.

Companies and investors don't worry about long-term anymore. It's why we've seen so many large companies destroyed over the past decade.

Which is why I agree with him that the stock market is for suckers.

You had me at hello.

I know some say too much, others say too little on Libya. I think it was about right for a non-strategic war for US and in supporting our allies in "old Europe" in their fight. I remember the Balkan war when we were dis-proportionately involved considering it was in our allies backyard.

Who Did What in Libya - Real Time Brussels - WSJ