chippo

Bull Run on AllianceBernstein

Its now run by Peter Kraus a walking testament to wall street greed, I would run away from this.

25% of company executives in a European survey run by Ernst & Young say it's okay to bribe clients in order to stay in business during the recession. An 'alarmingly large number of respondents' also said it was okay to deliberately misstate financial performance.

corporate bigwig types do not have integrity as a strong suit, thats how they get to be bigwigs

Top Paid CEOs Did Not Perform Well as a Group in 2008

As a shareholder and human being I think that CEOs should not be get 10s let alone 100s of millions even when times are good.

Thain Calls Lewis a Liar: BofA Saga Continues

Without being forced to not sure that anyone that is not wall street would want anything to do with Merrill Lynch. ML is always at the epicenter of every wall street scam , and there have been a lot of them. Nobody with ethics would go anywhere near the company on their own free will.

5 Perverse Bailout Consequences

No congress is correct about the AIG bonuses. They should not forget about the Merrill bonuses, a clawback for the last few years should be in order. What was done is more than disconcerting, it borders on the criminal. For the amount of damage these people have done to the worlds economy there must be some law on the books to get some justice, so there should be criminal charges.

The Fate of General Motors' Rick Wagoner

This latest crisis is putting into focus just how staggeringly incompetent american management and corporate governance is in all areas except maximizing their own pay.

Microsoft Rubs Salt: Asks for Some Severance Back

Yet another story of billionaires nickle and diming the plebes. Corporate America is a disgrace to humanity.

Obsessing About Global Bank Stocks in the Post-Lehman World

Mr Freddo: Your comments regarding merrill lynch are spot on, its the gapping hole in the bac ship. It really is stunning about the bonuses, you can't do much worse then blowing up your own company and the world financial system, short of genocide I guess. If 14 people making 250M for those kind of results what would have happened if they actually made a profit? I keep waiting to hear about criminal charges, I hope its soon.

Eight Reasons Bank of America Is Going to $20

The problem is Merrill Lynch, the executives from the last 8 years have taken all of the cash out of the company and left an unquantifiable amount of losses. Its not worth taking a chance.

Is Barron's Right, Have We Entered a Golden Age of Activist Investing?

"eroded confidence in boards and corporate leadership" thats a good one, instead of eroded you should say destroyed.

The problem is corporate leadership is focused on one thing and one thing only that is maximizing their own pay packages, they will always find a way to do this and it will always be at the expense of shareholders. We need to get rid of the current crop of managers and replace the with people who want to build some value, so no more MBAs in the top ranks.

Have We Reached an Historic Buying Opportunity?

Hmm..I never new this one..my wife is learning english. shes right there are a lot of complications.

But 20 year time horizons? Hopefully we are not talking that long to get back our loses, because that would just show that the market is a loosers game. Which in fact it probably is. If it crashes ever 10 years the amount of energy that could have been saved by buying t-bills and sleeping better would be worth it.

How Wall Street Keeps Dooming Itself

Even more offensive is the pay that the top execs allot for themselves. John Thain 36 Million for 1 years work, Stan O'neal a 'retirement package' of 161 million, after taking 46 million in 06 and 10s of millions in preceeding years. This is while the company is being driven into oblivion and low level support staff are being given the boot. Honestly, how many 14 room mansions does a person need. These guys are such money grubbing toads that its obscene.

I thought there was a clawback provision in Sarbanes Oxley specifically for this sort of thing? Why are these guys getting away with it?

What Was Good About Boom-Era 'Lazy' Portfolios

I have to agree, the amount of time I have put into my portfolio over the last decade has taken away from my quality of life. And with the 2008 market, it was time wasted. In fact, I would be probably at the same level if I would just kept all my money in a savings account, and had fun instead of following the market.

I am going to try to rationalize my portfolio, into a few dividend etfs Also try to time the market a little bit by watching the moving averages, so hopefully I can avoid another collapse while trying to regain some of my loses.

Another Case For Bonus Clawbacks

Well bonus clawbacks may not be legal __now__ .

The guys at ML and their ilk have driven the world economy to the brink of collapse, inflicting pain on millions of people worldwide. All the while paying themselves obscene amounts. So they can retire to their 14 bedroom mansions while others who had nothing to do it with are unemployed and in hard straights? I say make it legal to clawback and get back everything from every manager at Merrill over the last 5 years.