Alan Schwartz
So how much do you pay for an executive that takes a long standing big name Wall Street company to drive it into a fire sale?
Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz has a salary of $250,000 a year. This sounds very modest but the $16,237,150 bonus he received for 2007 isn't and "other" long term compensation brings his total take to over $35,000,000.
For those who do not know the plight of Bear Stearns, as recently as last week Wednesday, Schwartz said in a televised interview on Wednesday that the company does not see any pressure on its liquidity and had about $17 billion in excess cash on its balance sheet. The company was sold off in a government backed fire sale over the weekend for $2/share. More than 90% off it's Friday closing of $30.85/share. The stock had been much higher in the recent past.
So who foots the bill? Not Alan Schwartz! Investors have been duped out of 90% of their investment overnight. How many Mutual funds and pension plans had cash in this train wreck of a company. How's your 401K doing? IRA? The Government continues to allow soulless companies to profit at the expense of the working class. Schwartz's $35,000,000 compensation would have paid for 583.3 salaries at $60,000 per year. Are you telling me that the company was better off with this one scumbag driving the company into the ground that having over 500 employees pounding the pavement, double checking that all the loans written to sub prime holders can actually repay this debt once the interest rates adjust?
So now Alan walks away with $35,000,000 in the bank from last year alone and moves on to destroy another company and more peoples retirement accounts. While his workers get laid off with nothing and the investors are left to cry about what happened to their savings. Bear Stearns' Employees owned almost a third of the company in stock investments. Their fortunes are worth almost nothing now as they start looking for new jobs.
Former CEO Jimmy Cayne's investments were worth a billion dollars as recently as last year when the stock was trading at $170/share (according to Foxnews). But I have a hard time feeling sorry for someone whose compensation was over $40,000,000/year.
Under the present administration and the last we have seen scandal after scandal in the business community while our middle class takes it on the chin every time and the perpetrator gets a slap on the wrist. American companies don't actually make anything anymore, they specialize in duping the common American to give them their money in investments so they can get richer and who cares about the common person? No one.
Where is Adam Smiths "hand of God" now? No where to be seen. Legislated out of existence in our schools. Pushed out of the court rooms by the liberals and vocal minority while the silent majority just sit by and take it.
Our first Vice President, John Adams warned, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and a religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other". We have fallen so far from that standard that the rule of the day is take everything you can for yourself and screw the common good.
Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz has a salary of $250,000 a year. This sounds very modest but the $16,237,150 bonus he received for 2007 isn't and "other" long term compensation brings his total take to over $35,000,000.
For those who do not know the plight of Bear Stearns, as recently as last week Wednesday, Schwartz said in a televised interview on Wednesday that the company does not see any pressure on its liquidity and had about $17 billion in excess cash on its balance sheet. The company was sold off in a government backed fire sale over the weekend for $2/share. More than 90% off it's Friday closing of $30.85/share. The stock had been much higher in the recent past.
So who foots the bill? Not Alan Schwartz! Investors have been duped out of 90% of their investment overnight. How many Mutual funds and pension plans had cash in this train wreck of a company. How's your 401K doing? IRA? The Government continues to allow soulless companies to profit at the expense of the working class. Schwartz's $35,000,000 compensation would have paid for 583.3 salaries at $60,000 per year. Are you telling me that the company was better off with this one scumbag driving the company into the ground that having over 500 employees pounding the pavement, double checking that all the loans written to sub prime holders can actually repay this debt once the interest rates adjust?
So now Alan walks away with $35,000,000 in the bank from last year alone and moves on to destroy another company and more peoples retirement accounts. While his workers get laid off with nothing and the investors are left to cry about what happened to their savings. Bear Stearns' Employees owned almost a third of the company in stock investments. Their fortunes are worth almost nothing now as they start looking for new jobs.
Former CEO Jimmy Cayne's investments were worth a billion dollars as recently as last year when the stock was trading at $170/share (according to Foxnews). But I have a hard time feeling sorry for someone whose compensation was over $40,000,000/year.
Under the present administration and the last we have seen scandal after scandal in the business community while our middle class takes it on the chin every time and the perpetrator gets a slap on the wrist. American companies don't actually make anything anymore, they specialize in duping the common American to give them their money in investments so they can get richer and who cares about the common person? No one.
Where is Adam Smiths "hand of God" now? No where to be seen. Legislated out of existence in our schools. Pushed out of the court rooms by the liberals and vocal minority while the silent majority just sit by and take it.
Our first Vice President, John Adams warned, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and a religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other". We have fallen so far from that standard that the rule of the day is take everything you can for yourself and screw the common good.
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