I've been meaning to post this one up from Pleiades.
Announcing the hearings last week, Barney Frank, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, said that public patience with Wall Street bailouts had worn thin.
"As I've said to a couple of the bankers, 'Here's this problem: People really hate you, and they're starting to hate us because we're hanging out with you,'" Mr Frank said.
Yesterday, he urged them to be "cooperative, not grudgingly, not doing the minimum" as the US government seeks to impose a new culture of responsibility on an industry that has become known for its enormous pay packets, corporate jets and lavish junkets.
"Understating that there is substantial public anger and alleviating that public anger not with mumbo jumbo but with reality is essential if we're going to have the support in the country to take the right steps," Mr Frank said.
Public anger boiled over last month when it was revealed that the total amount of bonuses paid out to staff for 2008 was $18.4bn – a figure that prompted President Barack Obama to describe the pay-outs as "shameful" while banks were being propped up by taxpayer money, and led him to impose a pay cap of $500,000 on executives of banks that need more emergency cash.
"It is abundantly clear that we are here amidst broad public anger at our industry," Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs, said.
The chief executives before Congress included Vikram Pandit, the head of Citigroup, which received government guarantees of more than $300bn after coming close to collapse in December.
Mr Pandit made $216m when Citigroup bought his hedge fund business to lure him to a top job at the company and paid him bonuses to sign on as chief executive in 2007.
Yesterday, he took the lead in promising that Wall Street understands the new realities of life with the government as a significant investor. "I've told my board of directors that my salary should be $1 per year with no bonus until we return to profitability," he said. "We will hold ourselves accountable and that starts with me," he said.
Outside the House of Representatives office building where the hearing took place, about a dozen protesters taunted Bank of America's Ken Lewis. "Hey, Ken Lewis, feel our pain," they chanted.
"I feel more like corporal of the universe, not captain of the universe at this moment," Mr Lewis said inside, after coming under intense questioning from the California Democrat Maxine Waters.
Yep. Blinfields for Blankfein!
Look Back At Mr Anger
Heres' something I missed too. It's a little old, but it has a nice mention of our man, Mr. Angry Mac.
I could point to the artistry of his game as a get-out clause, as a way of justifying my admiration for someone whose behaviour I've deemed not good enough in others.
If an overpaid soccer player carried on the way McEnroe did at times, this column would be outraged.
I don't have a decent excuse for this double standard, except that no one is perfect. And I'm not talking McEnroe here.
In truth McEnroe was so bad at times that there is no way of justifying any worship of him. It is what it is, and I even found, and still find, the McEnroe the world sees as likeable.
I suppose it is like life itself, that people's attraction to others is not always completely rational, and can be irrational.
McEnroe will always be up there, alongside other personal favourites like the English cricket batsman David Gower, our own cricket maestro Richard Hadlee, Christian Cullen, Bryan Williams, film clips of George Best and Muhammad Ali, the Swiss Miss Martina Hingis, and the anticipation I feel whenever Wayne Rooney gets near the ball, as providing my most cherished viewing of sport.
Those aforementioned favourites are easily explainable of course. I beg forgiveness on this one though, because I could watch McEnroe - bonus tantrums included - for hours.
It's a pretty cute column worth the read.
The Weirdness Of World Interest
I'm not berating you the reader, but it is somewhat disturbing that the interest in a 13 year old dad outweighs the interest in Paul Kanjorsky telling how we came 3 hours from the total meltdown of our economic system. I mean, for every person interested in what Kanjorsky said, there are 7 people who wanted to know about Alfie Patten. I mean, that's a little nuts folks. :)
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