Forget mere pedophiles, what we need is a public registry of the most greedy bastards in America. It is time for public shaming. It is time to make examples. It is time to change the idea of what is cool, let alone acceptable, for future generations to aim for.
The Huffington Post made a good start. As per the Huffington Post
Banks that have their hands out in Washington this year were handing out multimillion-dollar rewards to their executives last year.
The 116 banks that so far have received taxpayer dollars to boost them through the economic crisis gave their top tier of executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses and other benefits in 2007, an Associated Press analysis found.
That amount, spread among the 600 highest paid bank executives, would cover the bailout money given to 53 of the banks that have shared the $188 billion that Washington has doled out in rescue packages so far.
Lloyd Blankfein, president and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, took home nearly $54 million in compensation last year. The company's top five executives received a total of $242 million. This year, Goldman's seven top-paid executives will work for their base salaries of $600,000, with no stock or cash bonuses, the company said. Goldman received $10 billion in taxpayer money on Oct. 28.
John A. Thain, chief executive of Merrill Lynch, topped all corporate bank bosses with $83 million in earnings last year. Thain came to Merrill Lynch in December 2007, avoiding the blame for a year in which Merrill lost $7.8 billion. Since he began work late in the year, he earned $57,692 in salary, a $15 million signing bonus and an additional $68 million in stock options. Merrill tapped taxpayers for $10 billion on Oct. 28...Richard D. Fairbank, the chairman of Capital One Financial Corp., took a $1 million hit in compensation after his company had a disappointing year, but still got $17 million in stock options. The McLean, Va.-based company received $3.56 billion in bailout money on Nov. 14.
Other bailed out chief executives like Robert P. Kelly of Bank of New York Mellon Corp's stipend for financial planning services came to $66,748, on top of his $975,000 salary and $7.5 million bonus. His car and driver cost $178,879. Kelly also received $846,000 in relocation expenses, including help selling his home in Pittsburgh and purchasing one in Manhattan.
I've watched my small pension's value evaporate. It took a lifetime of hard work and saving to earn that. I now understand the logic of the guillotine. I wish I owned one! I don't. But we do have courts, law suits, and prisons. They won't do that much to change things though, only shame will.
What we really need is scorn, derision and a lifetime of shame for these jerks that will actually change the American mindset as to what "success" is. If it stays all about the quickest route to the most money without limits, we are doomed.
I have a project for the readers of the Huffington Post, and every American that cares about our future:
Let's collect the names, addresses and personal information on the greed-deluded from the brokerage firms, hedge funds and banks that are taking my money and yours, have taken our money and will take it again unless stopped. They are obscenely enriching themselves while simultaneously running you and me and our futures into the ground. Now we're bailing them out! And they are still paying themselves!
Enough is enough. Put some in prison. Sue others. But for all of them, it's time for massive, prolonged and furious shaming. Why?
No, this isn't about revenge. It is about object lessons. It is about changing the way we think. It is about doing to financial services' greed what a generation ago we did to making smoking un-cool, misogyny unacceptable and racism passe.
It's time to make such a fearsome public example of these folks that they have the same "bright future" as child molesters who find themselves on a national registry. Either the bankers, brokers et al give back everything they have made from their bonuses and perks during this time of financial collapse, now -- except what they need to live on: say what your average general practitioner or university professor makes -- or we'll boo them in the street, hiss when they walk into restaurants, publish their photographs, send them plenty of email expressing our feelings and make them wish they were hiding out in some homeless shelter.
No more anonymous "legal" larceny. Let's make it so un-cool to live like these greed-deluded people have lived while destroying us that it teaches the next generation that setting your sights on this sort of greed-is-good behavior as an "achievement" is very, very yesterday.
Lets make future achievement be about about science, good teaching, saving the earth, invention, and medical care for all. Lets put today's-style "financial services industry" where it belongs in the pantheon of ambition for young people: somewhere between becoming a truck-stop whore and learning how to pick blind cripple's pockets.
Hey Huff Post editors!: Continue what you started with the list above. Start a new permanent page, a "Gallery of Shame and Betrayal."
Start adding to the list above, then update the names, faces and information. Let's get to know the greed-deluded who took us down and are still profiting from our destruction and now from our tax dollars too. No more showing up in private jets to ask for our money, be they the losers from the big three car makers in Detroit or those losers named above.
Collect the information folks. Where do they eat? Where are their yachts docked? Where is that fifth summer home? What clubs do they belong to?
We have sent the venal Republican Party -- that encouraged the recent bout of nation-betraying, non-regulated greed -- packing. Now let's send a warning to all future generations. Let's start by the metaphorical "shaving" of the heads of the John A. Thain's, Lloyd Blankfein, Richard D. Fairbank, Robert P. Kelly et al. The French resistance did that to traitors and collaborators. We too have been betrayed and are being betrayed.
Vive La Revolution!
Frank Schaeffer is the author of Crazy For God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back (Now in Paperback).