Good Boss.
Bad boss.
Sweet mother Mary’s braided armpit hairs. The turkey-necked motherfucker above is Jimmy Cayne, Chairman of Bear Sterns and Fucksocket Extraordinaire. While his company was tanking, what do you think he was doing? Well, because the Guys At The Top always work so much harder than everyone else, he was off playing cards. Or golf.Seriously.
Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. Chairman
Jimmy Cayne was playing cards in a tournament late last week
while his company’s future appeared to be at risk, according a
published report.As the bank hammered out an emergency funding deal on
Thursday with the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase,
which resulted in Bear’s shares falling by as much as half,
Cayne was playing in the North American Bridge Championship in
Detroit, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on
Friday.Cayne, who in January stepped down as Bear Stearns’
long-time chief executive, is no stranger to controversy about
his hobbies. Last year he was criticized for spending too much
time playing bridge and golf while Bear stumbled on wrong-way
bets on subprime mortgages.Cayne played cards last week during a period in which Bear
Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz held conference calls with directors
about the pending cash pledge, the newspaper said, although
Cayne participated in at least some of the dialogue.
Can’t we bring back crucifixion for these cocksuckers? Or at least scourging? This piece of shit is now responsible for a small town being unemployed. Think about that. There will be at least 10,000 firings since JP Morgan bought Bear Sterns for pennies on the dollar. That’s the size of a small town. Ten thousand people who, like the Enron employees, held portfolios that were loaded with shares of the company where they worked. Ten thousand people, most of whom just wanted to show up to work, draw a paycheck, make ends meet, and enjoy their families and lives.
Jimmy Cayne, a miserable failure of a human being, just stole from an entire village. And that doesn’t begin to address the larger implications for all of us of his company’s failure. If there were a just and loving god in the universe, he’d be looking at 25 with an L in general population prison.
“Sweet mother Mary’s braided armpit hairs.” And, no exclamation point? Surely that deserves a good exclamation point? If it had been me it would have received a double exclamation point. Really, you can’t overuse exclamation points at a time like this.
Oh well…let them eat cake!!!!
Maybe he and Conrad Black can hang out in prison. They’d have a lot to talk about.
A.
Has any CEO or Chairman or Lord High Executive Muckety-Muck of any large company been fired in the past 10 years?
Not golden parachuted. Not exercised his early options and pursued other interests. Not renegotiated his contract. I’m talking plain old, out on your ass, “here’s your box of stuff, last week’s paycheck, and a security guard to escort you to the door” fired?
I hear about these people who have made collossal mistakes, screwed companies beyond repair, ruined entire industries and flat out broke the law, but I have never once heard of any of them getting the boot without their bonuses or severance pay or whatever.
I want to work in a job where I can screw up as much as I want and not get fired. Where do I apply for one of those?
I believe you need to try any of the “political rountables” on the Sunday morning gasbag shows. Or cable news. Or, hell, the op-ed page of any major newspaper.
Man, you can fuck up knowing what day it is at any of those jobs and still have employment.
Dorothy, Dennis Fitzsimmons walked away from the Tribune Co with something like 40 million, after gutting and skullfucking all their newspapers, so, you know, the next time somebody tells you newspapers are running out of money, you can laugh really loud.
CEO is a nice racket if you can get into it, and ignore the smell of all the bodies you leave behind you.
A.
but but but was he heavily invested in his own company for some kharma?
Personal responsibility?? That’s for the middle managers and peons in the trenches- you know, the people who actually make the company run. In my job, I get frequent perfomance reviews and if I’m not dotting every “i” and crossing every “T” no matter how inconsequential, the overseers at my happy little corporate plantation let me know about it. CEO’s – not so much. They run their companies into the ground, stealing litterally millions while throwing the dedicated employees (heretofore referred to simply as “serfs”) are thrown out on their asses – no pension, no health insurance – no nothing. But these scumbags walk away with millions and end up writing books putting forth their words of “wisdom” on “Leadership” (no joke – go to any Borders, Barnes and Noble, etc and see how many failed CEO’s have books out). One last thing: At the risk of putting on the tin foil hat, I don’t believe for a minute that Kenny Boy Lay is dead. When you’ve stolen as much as he has; when you can personally call Dick Cheney your good ol’ buddy, faking your death to avoid going to jail and having your entire fortune turned over to the people you’ve robbed is a pretty easy task. Just my opinion -it’s worth what it costs.
As Dorothy implies above; in today’s mythos, a CEO is some supernatural being. They are some sort of uber-class with the power to make decision. So if the company does good, they get rewarded. If the company tanks, they get rewarded. Because they are so rare, companies hold outrageous bidding wars to vie for their running their company.
As there is no accountability, there is no incentive to work.
If they get dismissed from the board, they are guaranteed a golden parachute plus the other companies will hold a bidding war for them, guaranteed to up their salaries. Of course, their salaries are hidden in obscure benefits packages.
As Dogbert observed, the best thing to do is to have a humongous failure. The bigger the failure, the bigger the project and hence the proof that one is competent for these bigger ventures.
Athenae: you training Jude on ROTFLMAO phrases? He’s a good student!
He’s being held accountbale…
Heck, just last January, he was worth more than $1,200,000,000 based on the Bear Stern stock he owned.
Now, he’s only worth something like $13,000,000 for that same, “fire sale priced” stock.
I mean really, isn’t that kind of financial pain enough? I mean heck, with that kind of haircut, he might even have to pay the same tax rate as his accountant. But, probably not as much as his secretary.
Its not like some famous attorney general cum ex-governor is going to come after him or something. Besides, the US atty for Souther NY is already busy building a case against some slutty ex-governor who paid for it.
/snark
SP
gene214, as someone who once trod the halls at “the crooked E”, I share your sentiment. Thankfully for me, I was but a contractor, but I saw my friends get the hose big time. I do not doubt that Kenny is alive and well and sunning himself in an island paradise somewhere. All that money…please, he probably watched “Fletch” for how ‘not’ to hire a stand-in for his ‘death’. C’mon, “went off” his heart meds, went to a high altitude knowing it wasn’t right for his ‘problems’ – and gee, keeled over?!?! Too cut and dried.
Elspeth
Kinda looks like Bill “Big Tuna” Parcells, with bad hair, doesn’t he?
It’s worse than a small town; that was 10,000 people with jobs, breadwinners of whom the majority presumably had families, children, parents in nursing homes, kids in college. The actual small town was probably more like 40,000…