I just spent three days doing heavy problem-solving at a major global customer site in NY. As I signed in on Tuesday, they were walking people out — people that they had just laid off that morning. The people had tears in their eyes. The receptionist, who is paid to be upbeat and chipper, was watching her friends losing their incomes and jobs. We exchanged understanding looks, and that was the most we could do.

Main Street took another hit from the global industrial complex, and I had a hard time shaking off the gloom.

Yeah, better get the big event in before the Kool Aid wears off.

This mess didn’t occur overnight, and it won’t get cleaned up overnight, and Obama, though I wsih him well, is not god.

I guess what’s really disappointing given the resources and brilliance the top execs currently receiving/requesting help have at their fingertips is that they don’t have the sense to, at a minimum, think about how they can sell this necessity to America. They must have incredible marketing staff/contractors that should have stepped up to ensure success.

Some ideas that seem obvious:

1)Appear to be frugal and take some hits – market the announcements of the bonus/salary cuts/sale of corporate jets/cancelled junkets/use of telecommuting.

2)Apply all possible strategies to appear frugal
(coach flights,Motel 6 and McDonalds for all meetings)

…but they did not.

That is what makes me beyond angry – it scares me that these guys are really that dumb.

It calls for action. In the normal free-market world it is when their HR angel of death, and the board, with shareholder support,arrive to quietly and calmly apply the corporate guilotine for these folks. No anger, no blood, no golden parachutes-just a simple adios as has been served up many a time for many of their comrades/subordinates.

Bring in someone new who America will rally behind and fund. Simple stuff.

I have no wish to see the financial ‘miscreants’ lined up against a wall, Saint Valentine’s Day style (though a daily parade of suits doing perp walks would bring much needed mirth to a lot of financially suffering souls right now). The real thrust of my concern is how do we keep their filthy snouts out of the mammoth amounts of tax-payer money being made available by desperate legistors and regulators (most ladled directly into their troughs with little of the intended benefits being realized)? Is rewarding their swinish behavior essential to maintain our own survival?

The delightful argument that we are ‘all in this together’ is patently absurd. When the big boys are rolling around in their ill-gotten fortunes, they have not the slightest concern about the welfare of the masses (their social Darwinist souls have spent decades relishing and proclaming their inherent self-reliant superiority), but let a few million of their wealth evaporate, and they’re at government’s door begging for hand-outs ‘because they’re too big to fail’. Over the years they’ve been quite happy laying off workers in the quest for higher stock value, while justifying obscenely high CEO compensation to worker wage ratios. So I don’t want to hear any of that ‘we’re all Americans’ bushwah (cool term I’ve not heard much recently but must use more often). It’s good to be considered part of the team, but when you’re standing in swamp, muck up to your chin, while the handsome corporate captains rally the troops, it rapidly loses its allure.

They know they have us by the short-ones, and that timid reason will support ‘not throwing the baby out with the bathwater’. However, they may not realize that real and pervasive societal anger is growing, and becoming increasingly entrenched. The public, probably despite its own larger best interests, will eventually lose patience with their threats.

Thanks for the rapid (and comparatively gentle) response.

I’m a former Wall Streeter but I don’t mind the gentle chiding about how to read earnings #s.

But rather than debating back with minutiae and to make my original comment perfectly clear, the three immediate examples I laid out (and I’m sure there are other facets that can and should be added to this debate) speak to:

1) How much more can you squeeze out of workers?
2) Arrogance.
3) And onto point #3.

As a former Wall Streeter I’m trying to see how things look from Main Street. Goodwill is created via a divestiture. It’s going to be written off over time but it was also supposed to reflect all the value that captains of industry supposedly created in the 1990s. Now it’s gone in a puff. What’s the man on Main Street going to think about this and how will he view future earnings?

So point 3 is about honesty and trust. If you ask anyone on Wall Street these days, they’ll say no one trusts anyone else. I’ve often wondered what the social costs might be one day of all of us fudging here and there as we think we need to to get ahead in business. Maybe we’re seeing a little of that answer now.

I believe in civility at all times. I hope your earlier post on qualities of a good President will show through in the coming months; no matter how we voted, we all need to pull together for this one and in this spirit I agree with this post. I also appreciate both your and Mike’s honesty; I’ll take honest anger over dishonest subterfuge anyday.

But if you think we are going to get through this as a nation solely on the basis of a rallying cry I think we’re going to find it a tough row to hoe. I can immediately think of three reasons why Main Street doesn’t see Wall Street as one of its own:

1) It’s a fact and no longer debatable that income inequality has risen markedly in this country. The OECD’s study of the mid-1980s till the mid-2000s show the US #4 in terms of rising inequality among rich countries (behind New Zealand, Finland and Portugal). Source: The Economist, 11/1/08.

2) Detroit’s Big Three arriving in DC on private jets won’t make Detroit feel like we’re all in this together. Kudos to ABC News for being sensitive enough to pick this up.

3) There’s a large media company that reported $267mn in operating earnings for 3Q08 but then said net losses were -$12.7bn! Net losses amounted to 37 quarters (nine years) of operating earnings if you used the # from 3Q07 as a base. To Main Street, what is that supposed to mean and how can anybody believe this?

In the City of Guadalajara, Mexico, I understand that there are some 50,000 U.S. Citizens living there.

My wondering leads me to this question: Do these people come back to the U.S. to vote, or, do they send their dollars/pesos back to do the voting for them?

Wondering just wondering…..

I have dedicated my life to protecting and helping less fortunate people who work hard but never get ahead. I believe that it is time for Americans to stop worrying about health care, retirement accounts, mortgage payments, credit scores, education, and other “necessities”. Other people in this world get by on much less and are a great deal happier.

Do I have lowered expectations? Yes. Do I have lower stress and anxiety? Yes. The extra work used to accumulate a “secure future” is all for naught in the end. The people in charge will always find a way to take from those who work hard and save.

You either have to be a scoundrel or stop caring. Being middle class is not wise or smart these days. Nobody that I know who is middle class is happy. Only the extremely rich who are safe or the extremely poor who have lost nothing are happy.

Lately it has propelled the G8 into a G20. Who knows – could it ultimately land on the table of the UN?

An exaggeration? Possibly, but not as much as the other end of the spectrum – that the crisis is owned by the USA.

I agree – mostly. I guess I think its all only ‘relative’ until the whole thing collapses; which may or may not happen. At that point, I figure we are all equally screwed, it just took longer for some to get there than others.

Anyway, those industries and people have their own bad business models to thank, no one else.

I completely agree that Wall St and Main St are inseparable and will remain that way. And I agree that we all have the same worries.

But, just for a second, let’s try to remember that no matter how much money we make, our race or creed, or where we come from, we all have to deal with the same, single fundamental truth with respect to our financial lives: People are responsible for their own actions. Over-leveraged banks, an auto industry that pays less skilled workers a ton of money and benefits to produce vehicles of lower quality than their Japanese counterparts, and yes, finally, Joe Blow who took out a mortgage he couldn’t afford.

I could go on. How much money do Americans save these days? How much credit card debt do they have? How do they prepare THEMSELVES for retirement? The answers are not much (or none), too much, and very poorly (if at all). I, for one, am looking forward to sleeping in the bed I’m making. Are you?

Spokane’s a nice place, but the rest of us have a point of view too, Mike, and we aren’t all mad at everyone in the upper end of the income bracket.

Hey Bing…the “Victory at Sea” title is a good one…it angered me at first but rang true when I caught your reference. Great propoganda that ignored that absolute carnage that was going on.

Let me go look at my 401K…all that GE stock I get as a 401K match sure seems to be trending one way!