These companies all gots balls…

via www.sloganmaker.net

If AIG had failed, it could have taken down a substantial portion of the banking system with it. The reason AIG is having so much trouble is because of a very small number of its own employees and a SUBSTANTIAL number of corrupt mortgage brokers who deceived them. When the U.S. housing market began to flail around like a steerage passenger on Titanic, it was not the banks who took the first ballshots – it was the companies that insured the mortgages like AIG.

Anyone who knows me knows I am NOT a fan of corporations or financial institutions… especially insurers. But for some, companies like AIG are the only way they can get started in the housing market. These are not people who cannot AFFORD a house or to keep one, these are simply people who cannot come up with a lump sum like $25K to $100K in cash to put down when buying a home. If you are a part of the middle class, I’ll bet you did not put $100K down when you bought your first home. In this day and age, with just average houses running in the half-a-million-dollar range in many areas, this is the amount of cash you would have to have in hand as a down payment to buy a home without coverage from AIG or another similar entity.

No, they don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts – under normal circumstances the failure rate in mortgages is VERY low, and these companies realize a SUBSTANTIAL profit because the premiums they collect more than offset the payouts they used to have to make.

Greed changed all that – and it was not the greed of AIG – it was the greed of a relatively small number of morally bankrupt, corrupt, or stupid brokers and bankers trying to squeeze more profits out of a mortgage market that had become saturated by the fact that everyone who could afford a mortgage pretty much already had one, and the ageing population of boomers who were moving OUT of the mortgage market as they sold their large homes and began living off the proceeds from their equity. Those people who took that money are long gone, like the con man who flimflams you and disappears with your cash never to be seen again before you realize what has happened.

In 2008, AIG had something like 116,000 employees. The bonus figure paid out by AIG has been revised today to come to a total of $218 million dollars. They received something like $180 billion dollars in bailout funds. Those sound like HUGE numbers but let’s put this in perspective:

• $218,000,000 out of $180,000,000,000 is 0.12% of the total of bailout funds they received. That’s POINT ONE TWO – barely over a 10th of a percent
• the bonuses, divided over all the employees of the company, amount to $1879.31 per employee.
• The billions of dollars of aid money went to pay off the mortgage insurance claims of THOUSANDS of financial institutions, NOT AIG employees
• When I was 19, I worked as a salaried manager at McDonalds. This was in the 1980s. My bonus for HALF that year would have been about $2200 (if I had not left the company)

Large corporations that handle substantial sums of money give their employees bonuses for a VERY good reason: if you spent all day, every day at work handling huge sums of money in transactions while you struggled to keep your 1982 Dodge Omni on the road and feed your kids, you’d be quite tempted to find a way to skim a little something-something for yourself out of the till so you weren’t quite so destitute. Bonuses are a way to motivate employees and keep them from resenting all that money passing them by. By all accounts, 2/3 of the bonus money is not, in fact, going to the richest, highest-paid employees of AIG who would have had a part in making decisions contributing to the financial meltdown – they are being paid to those regular, average employees who are in the EXACT same boat as everyone else in these recessionary times.

Today, I am reading about protesters going to the homes – THE HOMES – of AIG executives to protest the bonuses. I am reading stories of AIG employees living in fear because of the reactions of the masses to all this half-baked sensationalist reporting. People who helped people get homes now live in fear because all they did was DO THEIR JOBS!

So, before you pull some FUCKNUT move and beat up your neighbour because he works for AIG, or go attack someone’s house because you are envious of the fact that they make more money than you, or tweet your outrage and get involved in the great debate on Twitter, consider this:

Assuming that you don’t operate the deep fryer or flip burgers or dig ditches, you probably received some kind of bonus last year. Call it a Christmas bonus, call it an incentive, call it a perquisite (“perk”) of whatever job you do. How much was it? More than $1000? Did you need it? Have you EVER received a “little extra” financial benefit because YOU did your job properly?

Are you now going to give it back to prove you aren’t a fucking hypocrite?

Well it applies to this Gasout/fuel boycott bullshit as well. In this case, the waste is one of time.

Temporary fuel BOYCOTTS will not help. Why? Because you CAN’T have the impact you think you have. If you truly simply stop driving for a few days, and could convince thousands of other drivers to do the same and join you in not burning fuel at all for a few days (fuel that you otherwise WOULD Have burned) you could reduce income marginally for a few days. The key word there is MARGINALLY – and no corporation is really going to care about that. The impact you have would be far greater on your local “fuel guy” if he is a franchisée, because he is the guy who needs people to come to his station so he can feed his family. So, if you want to send a message to the little guy, and give a guy who has little control over the price of fuel a good pummelling in the pocketbook, don’t burn gas for a few days. It’s a big waste of time, but as with most slacktivism, it will make you FEEL like you are doing something!

Lately there have been a lot of rumblings from the same typical group of morons wanting to boycott fuel for the Victoria Day weekend. What a FARCE! People open their cottages, and people get out for the first real long weekend of the summer season. They go out in their boats, and on their motorcycles, and their 4-wheelers. They aren’t going to skip that this year with the winter we had, so you are going to get very little response. IF someone “participates”, all they are going to do is buy gas in advance of the weekend, and that doesn’t change a damn thing except the day the company sold the fuel.

The only way to truly make an impact is to reduce consumption EVERY DAY, and work with others to help them do so, too. That means you have to stop wasting gas, and work at being efficient. That’s going to be very painful for some, because automobiles are ingrained in our culture as the basis of freedom.

How do you send a message about gas prices?

1. Call your MP and tell them to stop sending all the Canadian oil in Alberta to the US to profit American corporations and service Canadians first. DEMAND that Canadians come first – we have more than enough oil for our own needs. We need to start ACTING like an oil superpower for the short time we have that status.
2. Drive less, all the time. Car pool if you can, roll all your errands into one trip, take public transit, walk or ride a bike for short trips. Get a more efficient vehicle.
3. Learn to drive as efficiently as possible (see hypermiling.com)
4. Make investments with the money you SAVE by doing the above in companies pursuing alternative energy – just make sure they are bona-fide improvements, and not simply more-of-the-same (like hybrids – a RIDICULOUS attempt by the auto industry to prolong the inevitable demise of the gasoline engine). We need extreme efficiency and renewable resources – currently biofuels USE more energy than they produce and are devastating food markets worldwide.

If everyone works at this, it lowers demand, and will lower prices or at least slow down the rise of prices. Think about it – if there is a 20 year supply of oil left in the world, and we can use 25% less, it instantly becomes a 25 year supply – more time to develop alternatives!

“Gasouts” and boycotts are a waste of time and energy, and generally are just another way for people to pat themselves on the back for doing nothing.

Yes, today you get to pay extra to buy flowers. Why do they charge more today? Because they can.

In any other industry, if you decided to charge more for a commodity based on nothing more than increased demand for an item, especially when you knew it was coming and prepared for it, you’d have government watchdogs all over you like white on rice.

It is astounding to me how easily manipulated we are in this culture to do the same thing as our neighbours. If you gave your wife flowers TOMORROW, they would cost at most half what you paid to give them today. But, at the same, time, if you gave her the flowers tomorrow and explained this to her, she’d likely get really pissed off at you, and accuse you of being cheap.

Let’s be real here: what is special about Valentines Day? Do the stars shine brighter? Is the sun a little warmer? Is there ANY difference between today, Thursday, February 14th, and Tuesday the 12th or Friday the 15th? Putting aside the normal variations in weather, no, not really. It is only special because someone, somewhere decided it was special for them, and then as usual corporations like Hallmark, Carlton, the wholesale flower industry and chocolate companies went from FILLING a demand to artificially CREATING one with advertising and hype. Then, once they had people all in a ravenous feeding frenzy – they jacked the prices on everything.

GOTCHA! Once again, you have been treated like sheep, and separated from your dollars not because of NEED, but because of an artificial, culturally-induced WANT.

I am sure all the ladies are now thinking I am some cheap, unromantic bastard and you’d never want anything to do with me. Well, go ahead and think that. If you are so shallow that the only way I can prove my feelings for you are real is to waste money paying a ridiculously inflated price for some roses, well, we wouldn’t get along anyway. And, seriously – I can go on and on about this stuff. How about you ask me how I feel about the “Three Months Salary” guideline? Go ahead. I DARE you to ask me.

I AM a romantic. I give cards, gifts, and flowers when it is a surprise, not when it is EXPECTED. I don’t do Valentines Day, and I don’t do “making up for me doing something wrong” gifts (AKA bribes). Got news for you, boys – if you lost the entire nest egg playing poker or got caught boning the neighbours St. Bernard, guess which will come up at the divorce proceedings – your misdeed or the fact you bought her a $5000 diamond necklace to “make up” for it?

All Valentines Day proves year after year is that while money can’t buy happiness, it can, used indirectly, rent you a few hours (or minutes depending on the participants) of enthusiastic sexual favours.