It was the wastebasket. That did it for me. No, you can't justify $87,000 for a rug and you can't justify $35,000 for a commode -- yes, a commode -- but you really, really can't explain $1,400 for a wastebasket.
Made out of parchment.
Who buys a wastebasket that can catch fire faster than the trash inside it?
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While language this casual can often weaken an op-ed, I think the author succeeds somewhat here. The sense of outrage is clearly conveyed and coupled with factual evidence and incriminating quotes that shed light on the "greed" mentioned in the title.
I'm not exactly sure when the story of Thain and his magic wastebasket broke but in the links I've posted a CNBC item dating from Jan. 23. And Mitch Albom is writing about it on Feb. 1? Good grief.
In reading the other reviews, it appears that I am more put off than most folks by Albom's extremely late hit. I may be putting more of a premium on timeliness than I should. Taste enters into it, too: I think Albom is enormously overrated. But rating an opinion column is necessarily a subjective act.
A gut level story that appropriately expresses the outrage we all should feel with our economy gutted and our Treasury in the process of being robbed. The real problem, however, is not the narcissistic, uncaring CEO's (a bit of redundancy there)--no, the real problem is that such people have been allowed to occupy positions of responsibility in American life. We fail to identify their hubris as the fatal character flaw that it is, we elevate them to high positions, and (especially) we allow them to hand out billions of taxpayer dollars as though they were party favors, despite the fact that they must be earned one dollar at a time by hard working men and women.
Give me a person who has suffered some adversity in life, someone who has scraped by, someone working class for God's sake! Leave behind the elitist snobs who have never dug an honest ditch, and who believe that those who do are beneath them. No, I don't want government poking its nose in everyone's business deciding what is an appropriate amount to spend for waste baskets, rugs, toilets and ski vacations. Nor, for that matter, how much a CEO should earn--unless, of course, the ... More »
Famous journalist, author and op-ed writer Mitch Albom takes on John Thain in illustrating the depth, breadth and heighth of the CEO's greed, and how he justified his $1400 parchment trash can and billions in bonuses as the country sank into the New Depression. Worth reading so that reviewers and viewers of this site keep the focus on transparency and disclosure whenever the government donates tax money to Wall Street in the mistaken belief that this will stimulate the economy rather than the deadly sin of greed.
A business partner of mine knows Thain personally and told me about the CEO's lavish lifestyle and personal belief that, indeed, he was a "Master of the Universe." He'll covort with others soon in Dante's fourth level of hell (see link) or in New York federal district court when Attorney Gen. Andrew Cuomo indicts him a la Enron's Skilling.
Mitch Albom makes a convincing case (although he is more restrained than to say this outright) that it is time to get out the tar and feathers for overcompensated CEO's. An entertaining and provocative read.
If there are no legal means for reclaiming the taxpayer dollars Thain and the other obscenely greedy CEOs have taken through corporate welfare, we may as well shame and mock them...and make sure nobody ever believes that any one person 'deserves' more money than most nations on the planet enjoy. There is something seriously wrong with our nation if we continue to support stratospheric executive compensation, period. When they insist on seizing their gilded bonuses as their companies ... More »
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