Geithner, the Last Yuppie, Is Out of Business

On one side of the line there's a continued-to-be-employed managerial class, which includes, among others, the president and his Treasury secretary; and on the other side of the line there are the moralists, the PR savvy, and lots and lots of people who don't know from bonuses.

The former group, whose members have spent their adult years as young upwardly mobile professionals, take it as an article of faith that in order to get people to work you have to pay them; and, too, the more you pay, the better people you get to do the work; and better people do better work. That pretty much sums up the philosophy of compensation and corporate organization over the long course, and during the massive economic expansion, of the yuppie generation.

What is most shocking, although it shouldn't be, is to suddenly find, in the melee over the AIG bonuses, that Barack Obama is a yuppie. Really, who knew? And yet the fact that the AIG bonuses have not heretofore raised any hackles in the White House, that paying out hundreds of millions of dollars from a bankrupt company now owned by the government had been treated as business as usual, shows that the president subscribes to the philosophy of paying for the best and most upwardly mobile you can get. It obviously never occurred to him to think otherwise.

The president, with his new and unconvincing tone of moral outrage, will weather this. But Tim Geithner won't...

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Comments

[twofish]

Actually, paying people more to get better work out of them sounds like a good idea to me, as long as it's applied to those of us in the lower ranks, and not just the few at the top (or headed there). You suppose THAT ever occured to the "yuppies" who set pay rates and negotiate union contracts? Ha!

[marthainmaine]

Summers especially since he worked so hard with Phil Gramm to deregulate the banks. I would like for my govt. to stop putting people in a position to fix problems they caused.

[OldandCranky]

Very snarky post. But I'm having trouble understanding.....If "better people doing better work" brought AIG to the point of total collapse......how much worse would low-bonus average folks have done...would they have brought the company to the point of total collapse and then stolen office supplies or what? I'm having trouble understanding your point given the context.

[ArchAngel]

All of these men are in a conspiracy to quickly loot America of hundreds of Billions of dollars before anyone can figure out what is going on. If things turn badly for them, they will go to where they will be protected from extradition.

Failing firms are supposed to be put into bankruptcy where experts carefully examine the facts and carefully salvage what is salvageable.

[HMDMSR]

The President betrayed his yuppie views when he gave his speech on education a couple of weeks ago--more education to be more competitive, etc.

[paixa3]

I have no confidence in the presidents e""con""omics plans. I hope that Summers and Geithner get the boot, and soon. I also hope that Geithner, Summers, Paulson and Bernake can all be charged for Fraud.