Defining Extravagance Up

Whatever else anybody says, the real reason why nobody at Treasury pulled the plug on the AIG bonuses is simple: nobody thought the sums were truly outrageous or that the practice was completely outside the norm. Sometime over the last ten days, of course, everyone became a virgin again and proclaimed shock at the amount of money hedge funsters command. But those who didn't think payments on this scale were typical were those who weren't paying attention. And part of what they weren't paying attention to was themselves.

To paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan, we have defined extravagance up. It's admirable that our leaders want to be frugal with the taxpayer's money and recoup the six- and seven-figure bonuses paid to these financial alchemists, but let's pause for a moment and look what the taxpayers themselves have been buying with money not rendered unto Uncle Sam.

Million dollar McMansions. $175 sneakers. Super Sweet 16 parties. Bridezilla weddings. Massive high definition television sets. $6,000 boob jobs. Handheld electronic devices that enable 24-hour-a-day twittering. $17 cosmopolitans. $350 tickets to a baseball game. Blackberries for pre-teens that are used to send hundreds of messages every month that read in their entirety "LOL," "OMG" and "WTF." Humongous SUVs for people incompetent to park them in fewer than three spaces.

Not too long ago we all got a pretty good wake-up call when we saw how much Dennis Kozlowski at Tyco and Bernie Ebbers at WorldCom and Ken Lay at Enron were scarfing down. There was a lot of talk about limiting executive compensation, but we let that fever pass. Instead, the payments floated up, dragging the compensation scales behind. So now we see Dick Fuld making hundreds of millions and John Thain redecorating , and the financial grunts getting multimillions, and the vast majority of us plebes getting the bread and circuses of our day, like cheap electronics and up-to-the-minute accounts of the peregrinations of pantyless pop stars.

Feeling angry about the AIG bonuses? Right on! But why stop there?

Comments

[Haditup2here]

Personally, I have never had that kind of money to squandered on the things listed. However, I would be more interested in seeing a breakdown on all of the expenses of some colleges and universities -- as my school loans will be a beast to pay off.

[Oxonian2001]

The fact is many of us have been rightfully angry about executive compensation. There is a serious problem in this nation when CEOs are making more than 800 times as much as the average worker--while in other nations, such as Japan, CEOs make only 5-6 times as much. And we claim to the government that is of the people, by the people, for the people, LOL.

Many of us were also concerned about outsourcing and offshoring. We knew where the jobs were going. Yet, what do we get? The W administration telling us that outsourcing is "good" and "healthy." Yet those of us who protested were told that we were being unAmerican and unpatriotic.

Not least, it doesn't help that the media enjoys covering lavish wealth--whether it's Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or NYT's fatuous fashion coverage of botoxed, overtanned middle-aged socialites. The fact is that for too long, the miscreants on Wall Street have been leading the way in "celebrating" wealth. ANd the rest of America followed mindlessly.

So, yes, in the end, the problem does return to Wall Street and the fact that our government has complied with their every desire, from Reagan and especially through our own George III.

[justkeepswimming]

Well amen to that. Who wants to step up first and admit that they took out a mortgage they couldn't really afford, ran up stupid amounts of credit card debt, drove huge new cars they knew they'd never pay off, and generally lived off of ephemeral equity and easy credit to show off for the neighbors rather than living within their means and saving for a rainy day?

What's that sound ... crickets?

[Oxonian2001]

And, tell me, who granted the subprime mortgages in the first place? Who approved them? Who enabled all of this crap to happen?