This is going out the Goldman Sachs and their mind bogglingly stupid bonuses, who no doubt feel they work hard for the money! 😉
(Goldman Sachs can give out huge bonuses because of people who do work hard for the little money they do get. )

But enough about greedy bankers.

I always felt Donna Summer never got enough credit for her talent. She had great range, both vocally and in what she sang about.  True, she did Love to Love You Baby, but you miss out on alot of good music if you only focus on that.

I also know that some people think: 80s music/video…lame! Yet lots of people give credit to the look and music of the 70s, and having lived through both the 70s and the 80s, I’d take the 80s any day. And mark my words: big hair and big shoulderpads WILL come back soon. 🙂

Enough soap box rantings from me. Here’s the very good, very 80s, Donna Summer:

YouTube – Donna Summer – She Works Hard For The Money

P.S. Ok, just to drive home my point, here is You to Love You Baby from the 70s. (The other video is ’83). Not only is this NSFW, it is Not Suitable Anywhere! I cannot watch the “interpretive dance dude” without bursting out laughing. Not to pick on him in particular: there was ALOT of this going on in the 70s. He just manages to capture it so well, combining the best of Snoopy and Christopher Guest.

Just try watching it with a straight face.

80s 1, 70s 0.

Unlike B of A, Goldman Sachs appears to never have been in serious trouble as a result of the financial meltdown. If anything, they took a bit of a hit and roared back bigger and stronger. But as this  NYTimes.com article illustrates, they are at risk of being the poster child of tone deaf / stupid American corporations. How so?

“Goldman Sachs is on pace to pay annual bonuses that will rival the record payouts that it made in 2007, at the height of the bubble. In the last nine months, the bank set aside about $16.7 billion for compensation — on track to pay each of its 31,700 employees close to $700,000 this year. Top producers are expecting multimillion-dollar paydays.”

How big is that? Apparently

“Goldman set aside nearly half of its revenue to reward its employees, a common practice on Wall Street, even in this post-bailout era.”

And I love this comment:

“Goldman executives know they have a public opinion problem, and they are trying to figure out what to do about it — as long as it does not involve actually cutting pay.

Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive, finds himself in the unusual position of defending a successful company in a nation that normally celebrates success.”

Of course, they would not be celebrating their success if the taxpayers of the United States had coughed up significant money to prevent Goldman and their counterparts from going under (even though some of them still have in the form of mergers and acquisitions).

So what is Goldman Sachs proposing? Well,

“”Goldman said Thursday that it would donate $200 million to its charitable foundation (that figure represents 6 percent of its third-quarter profit, or about six days of earnings).”

Now they are putting almost 50% of their annual revenue aside for bonuses, and 1.5% of their profit for charity. See something wrong here?

Then again, this canard comes up:

“But he said Goldman had a duty to its employees and to retain staff. By paying big bonuses, he said, the bank was trying to make a difficult trade-off between “being fair to our people who have done a remarkable job” and “what’s going on in the world.”

As always, my question is: where are the staff going to go? No where, that’s where. There is no where to go.

And then I love this:

“Goldman, Mr. Viniar said, was being unfairly singled out over its bonus culture. “Yes, I think that is too big a focus,” he said. “I would prefer people to be focused on the success of our business, how well we’re doing, and how well our people are performing.”

People! We should be happy for Goldman! Geez. Seriously, is this the best they can do? I thought the folks from Goldman were smart.

So, here’s what I think. Other banks, like Morgan Stanley are going to execute on reform, like “introducing three-year clawback provisions”. Whether this is still good is a question, but it is better than Goldman. To make a level playing field — corporations love level playing fields! — Goldman should be legislated to execute on the same reform that Morgan Stanley and others do. Smarter people than me can likely come up with all kinds of ways to rein in Goldman. But they need to be reined in and made an example of.

Otherwise, the next big crisis to occur, the tail (Goldman Sachs) is going to be wagging the dog (the people of the U.S.A.). (Although some would argue that they did that this time. And if they get away with this, I will believe them.)

From what I can see, there has not been enough new governance or accountability following the bank meltdown that precipitated the Great Recession. However, there have been some significant activity here and there, including this from the NYTimes.com:

Bank of America’s embattled chief executive, Kenneth D. Lewis, agreed Thursday not to take a salary or bonus for 2009, as new information emerged about legal advice the firm received on its ill-fated merger with Merrill Lynch.

Mr. Lewis also agreed to reimburse the bank for paychecks he has received since January, after Kenneth R. Feinberg, the government’s overseer of executive compensation, urged Mr. Lewis to take no compensation this year.

Sadly, I think this is only occurring due to serious legal steps being taken by New York’s Attorney General. Not alot if anything seems to be coming from Washington. While I am faintly hopeful that after the Health Care legislation is finished, this is taken up, I cynically think it is going to require a new short sharp shock before anything of note happens.

It’s great to have friends in useful occupations, be they doctors, lawyers, plumbers, or cooks.  In my case, I have some smart friends who are physicists. Which is great when I read an article like this on Slashdot about how a group of scientists have created a black hole for light, because I can ask them: should I be concerned? And they can reply:

…it’s an analog of a gravitational black hole rather than the real thing.

If it were a gravitational black hole, my answer to you would be: Yes, Worry! That’s because all matter responds to the gravitational field. In this case, the hole would start absorbing everything that came within its radius, and that radius would expand as a hole grew. The radius could in principle and rapidly grow large enough to absorb the entire earth!

But happily this particular analog affects only light, so all other kinds of matter are unaffected — including the device that is creating the effect.

Moreover, the actual analog “black hole” has a relatively small radius, so the only light it affects will be light that finds itself within the device.

All in all, it’s safe enough then…