If had the scummy old bastard’s track record, I guess I’d trust the marketplace, too.
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March 20, 2006
WB: Trusting the Marketplace
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US debt limit nears $9 trillion
You recall, this is the point in the movie where the bow slides under water and the stern of the ship raises up, just before the hull breaks in two, and sends over half of the passengers into the stygian blackness of unrecoverable debt.
Of course, on Wall Street, they’re still playing, “Laissez les bon temps roulez!” instead of, “Nearer my God to Thee”, which is why America has hit the iceberg of red ink in the first place!
Buy low and sell high! Here comes a US$ selloff!
It’s not who you know, it’s who you snow!
Posted by: PingPing | Mar 20 2006 22:11 utc | 3
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4827248.stm
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From: John W. Snow
john.snow@ustreas.gov
Please join me in an online seminar which will address how the Treasury Department plans to boost the US economy in 2006 by further increasing M3. Information at: http://billmon.org/archives/002363.html
Posted by: Larry Ellison | Mar 20 2006 22:20 utc | 4
The Attack on the U.S. Dollar and Energy Needs
Having borrowed itself into a corner, this article attempts to justify a military “solution” to the crisis.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 20 2006 23:04 utc | 5
Snow job is an under statement. CEO’s in the US are not being paid by market forces. If they were they would make $200,000 a year.
Snow and this whole admin are shills. I would say they should be impeached for economic treason.
I saw Kevin Phillips on Lou Dobbs tonight talking about his new book. He had an interesting take on current economic conditions. he believes the fundies so believe in the rapture that they have given up on bread and butter issues because armageden is coming. He said about thirty percent of the US population is in that category and most are in the Bush camp. So the economic elites just do what they want with no reprocussions at the ballot box. The fundies are sitting staring at the sky waiting for Jesus.
I do believe that book is worth a read. When Dobbs asked him about the US gaining back manufacturing base, Phillips said when countries like Britain and the Dutch went through the stages where business was shuffling money, the countrys never started making things again.
Interesting stuff.
Posted by: jdp | Mar 21 2006 3:47 utc | 6
The market is a mechanism for balancing supply and demand, and as grandaddy Adam Smith remided us, markets are there to benefit the people at large, not just to enrich certain individuals & groups at the expense of the rest.
The “free market” has become an ideology unto itself. As just as communism grew into an ideology that was prepared to walk over corpses in order to maintain itself, the “free market” has already taken its toll.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Mar 21 2006 6:58 utc | 7
Krugman is channeling Billmon on Mr. Snow
A copy of his NYT column is here
Speaking of executive compensation, Mr. Snow, it hurts your credibility when you say, as you did in a recent interview, that soaring pay for top executives reflects their productivity and that we should “trust the marketplace.” Executive pay isn’t set in the marketplace; it’s set by boards that the executives themselves appoint. And executives’ pay often bears little relationship to their performance.
You yourself, as you must know, are often cited as an example. When you were appointed to your present job, Forbes pointed out that the performance of the company you had run, CSX, was “middling at best.” Nonetheless, you were “by far the highest-paid chief in the industry.”
And the business careers of other prominent members of the administration, including the president and vice president, seem to demonstrate the truth of the adage that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. So my advice on the question of executive pay is: don’t go there.