Sears bankruptcy court OKs $25 million in bonuses for top execs

[Moonglow]

this is how it's always been
don't they sign contracts for this stuff?
maybe I missed it--where is the part about no severance pay?

usually in their failure just like an hourly employee..

 

[AvgGuyIA]

This is what we mean when we talk about a rigged economy. If Sears has $25 million to give bonuses to executives after closing over 100 stores, why is the company telling thousands of laid off employees they don't have the money to pay their severance?

Sears bankruptcy court OKs $25 million in bonuses for top execs

Because there are more employees than top executives. $25 million spread over the 10s of thousand severed employees is peanuts.

 

[AvgGuyIA]

So, would it be better for management to just walk away and for a bunch of even more expensive consultants to takeover to oversee the winddown/restructuring?

You don’t reward failure

Unless you cause a world wide recession and housing crash......

Let’s leave Bush out of it

Ding ding ding - we have a loser.

The roots of the problem are in the Clinton Admin.

Ding, ding, ding

More conservative revisionist history

Democrats caused the housing crises. We have video.

 

[AvgGuyIA]

So, would it be better for management to just walk away and for a bunch of even more expensive consultants to takeover to oversee the winddown/restructuring?

You don’t reward failure

Unless you cause a world wide recession and housing crash......

Let’s leave Bush out of it

Ding ding ding - we have a loser.

The roots of the problem are in the Clinton Admin.

Ding, ding, ding

More conservative revisionist history

Democrats caused the housing crises. We have video.

 

[AvgGuyIA]

This is what we mean when we talk about a rigged economy. If Sears has $25 million to give bonuses to executives after closing over 100 stores, why is the company telling thousands of laid off employees they don't have the money to pay their severance?

Sears bankruptcy court OKs $25 million in bonuses for top execs

This is the utmost in bullshit. The judge that approved it needs to be disbarred immediately.

We need to give this judge the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

 

[boedicca]

The causes are very complicated, but at the fulcrum is the significantly lowered standards for loan purchases by (taxpayer funded) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...and a requirement that they purchase at least 50% of the mortgages made to low and moderate income people. A lot of politicians fed at the FM-FM trough. It's disgusting.

Exactly! In the Clinton years buying a home became politicized as his administration forced banks and government funded lending institutions to finance homes for people, not based on their ability to buy a home, but on their socio-economic class.

The resulting cluster fuck was predictable and like the guy who drops an expensive vase and then points to the people behind him as he walks out of the store democrats have done their best to cover their culpability is this financial mess.

my brother works in the business and said the same thing
they had to go out of their way to ok loans to those who could not afford them

It was banks pushing those loans and nobody was twisting their arms. I used to get two or three calls a week encouraging me to refinance my mortgage

Wrong. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were required by the federal government to dramatically increase their purchases of risky loans (Franklin Raines actually lobbied for this as it expanded FM's business and his bonuses).


In 2000, Cuomo required a quantum leap in the number of affordable, low-to-moderate-income loans that the two mortgage banks—known collectively as Government Sponsored Enterprises—would have to buy. The GSEs don’t actually sell mortgages to borrowers. They buy them from banks and mortgage companies, allowing lenders to replenish their capital and make more loans. They also purchase mortgage-backed securities, which are pools of mortgages regularly acquired by the GSEs from investment firms. The government chartered these banks to pump money into the mortgage market and, while they did it, to make a strong enough profit to attract shareholders. That created a tug-of-war between their efforts to maximize shareholder value, which drove them toward high-end mortgages, and their congressionally mandated obligation to finance loans for those who needed help. The 1992 law required HUD’s secretary to make sure housing goals were being met and, every four years, set new goals for Fannie and Freddie.

Cuomo’s predecessor, Henry Cisneros, did that for the first time in December 1995, taking a cautious approach and moving the GSEs toward a requirement that 42 percent of their mortgages serve low- and moderate-income families. Cuomo raised that number to 50 percent and dramatically hiked GSE mandates to buy mortgages in underserved neighborhoods and for the “very-low-income.” Part of the pitch was racial, with Cuomo contending that Fannie and Freddie weren’t granting mortgages to minorities at the same rate as the private market. William Apgar, Cuomo’s top aide, told The Washington Post: “We believe that there are a lot of loans to black Americans that could be safely purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if these companies were more flexible.”

Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie

 

[boedicca]

The causes are very complicated, but at the fulcrum is the significantly lowered standards for loan purchases by (taxpayer funded) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...and a requirement that they purchase at least 50% of the mortgages made to low and moderate income people. A lot of politicians fed at the FM-FM trough. It's disgusting.

Exactly! In the Clinton years buying a home became politicized as his administration forced banks and government funded lending institutions to finance homes for people, not based on their ability to buy a home, but on their socio-economic class.

The resulting cluster fuck was predictable and like the guy who drops an expensive vase and then points to the people behind him as he walks out of the store democrats have done their best to cover their culpability is this financial mess.

my brother works in the business and said the same thing
they had to go out of their way to ok loans to those who could not afford them

It was banks pushing those loans and nobody was twisting their arms. I used to get two or three calls a week encouraging me to refinance my mortgage

1. my brother WORKS giving loans!!! do you??
2. was your credit score low?
3. I just got out of the service and just started a new job-- I couldn't get a loan/credit for a '' low cost '' wedding ring because I hadn't worked at my job long enough

Credit standards were blow up and loans were given to people who had neither the income nor assets to service the loans. The pretext was "helping poor disadvantaged largely minority people" to get homes. In RealityLand, when they defaulted, what little money they had at the beginning was lost. The only people the programs really helped were politicians, bankers, and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac management.

 

[AvgGuyIA]

The causes are very complicated, but at the fulcrum is the significantly lowered standards for loan purchases by (taxpayer funded) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...and a requirement that they purchase at least 50% of the mortgages made to low and moderate income people. A lot of politicians fed at the FM-FM trough. It's disgusting.

Exactly! In the Clinton years buying a home became politicized as his administration forced banks and government funded lending institutions to finance homes for people, not based on their ability to buy a home, but on their socio-economic class.

The resulting cluster fuck was predictable and like the guy who drops an expensive vase and then points to the people behind him as he walks out of the store democrats have done their best to cover their culpability is this financial mess.

my brother works in the business and said the same thing
they had to go out of their way to ok loans to those who could not afford them

It was banks pushing those loans and nobody was twisting their arms. I used to get two or three calls a week encouraging me to refinance my mortgage

The banks didn't pass the laws. Democrat congressmen did.

 

[Eric Arthur Blair]

Credit standards were blow up and loans were given to people who had neither the income nor assets to service the loans. The pretext was "helping poor disadvantaged largely minority people" to get homes. In RealityLand, when they defaulted, what little money they had at the beginning was lost. The only people the programs really helped were politicians, bankers, and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac management.

Homes in Sacramento were gutted and hollowed out when buyers just relinquished homes they couldn't possibly afford and the urban vermin descended and turned them into party homes/drug hangouts.
I'm sure that scene was repeated all over the country.

 

[Crepitus]

This is what we mean when we talk about a rigged economy. If Sears has $25 million to give bonuses to executives after closing over 100 stores, why is the company telling thousands of laid off employees they don't have the money to pay their severance?

Sears bankruptcy court OKs $25 million in bonuses for top execs

This is the utmost in bullshit. The judge that approved it needs to be disbarred immediately.

We need to give this judge the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

For paying failed executives bonuses?

Are you retarded?

 

[Vandalshandle]

So, would it be better for management to just walk away and for a bunch of even more expensive consultants to takeover to oversee the winddown/restructuring?

I enjoy visiting an alternative universe in which Clinton is to blame for the collapse of Sears, and millions of dollars in bonuses paid to Sears Executives....

 

[Vandalshandle]

You don’t reward failure

Unless you cause a world wide recession and housing crash......

Let’s leave Bush out of it

Ding ding ding - we have a loser.

The roots of the problem are in the Clinton Admin.

Ding, ding, ding

More conservative revisionist history

Democrats caused the housing crises. We have video.

That is just as funny as the first time you posted it!

 

[boedicca]

So, would it be better for management to just walk away and for a bunch of even more expensive consultants to takeover to oversee the winddown/restructuring?

I enjoy visiting an alternative universe in which Clinton is to blame for the collapse of Sears, and millions of dollars in bonuses paid to Sears Executives....

It's clear that you are thoroughly unacquainted with reality and history.

 

[Vandalshandle]

So, would it be better for management to just walk away and for a bunch of even more expensive consultants to takeover to oversee the winddown/restructuring?

I enjoy visiting an alternative universe in which Clinton is to blame for the collapse of Sears, and millions of dollars in bonuses paid to Sears Executives....

It's clear that you are thoroughly unacquainted with reality and history.

Actually, I am pretty sure that the demise of Sears was Truman's fault.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

I'm on the Board of Directors for a nearly-dead organization that was once a non-profit health care provider. It had always been on the edge, financially, for as long as I'd been associated with it; but a few years ago, a perfect storm of bad turns made the demise of this organization inevitable.

A couple years ago, our CEO just stopped doing his job, setting us adrift and blind, as we attempted to shut the organization down in an orderly manner. A young man was appointed to take his place, not because he was qualified, but because someone needed to take that position, and he was the one who volunteered. I cannot begin to describe the mess that he inherited, well enough to do it justice. It has included terrible legal battles with the IRS, with various state bureaucracies, and at one point, the resignations of all but two of the remaining board members (by law, we need to have at least three, but as of several months ago, there's just me and one other hanging on).

I've finally received word that the shutdown of our organization is imminent, that as of some time in January, it will be complete.

The young man who has been serving as interim CEO for the past couple years has aged noticeably, in the time that he's been carrying this responsibility. He took on a very bad situation, in which success was not a possibility; only failure, and the best to be done was to make this failure as orderly as possible. I cannot begin to imagine the stress he has surely been under, the burden that this job has placed on him.

Not that there's anything at all to suitably reward this young man for his efforts, but if somehow, $25 million showed up in our budget, designated as a bonus for him, I would not object. He's definitely earned it.

Not that I know anything about the burdens and responsibilities that Sears' CEO and other top executives have had to bear in its downfall, but my own experiences in a small, dying nonprofit give me a rather different perspective on how to judge these executives, if to judge them at all.

Is Sears dying because its executives have done a bad job, or is it dying in spite of the very best possible efforts on the part of these executives? Are they really to blame for this demise, or is it to their credit that Sears is not dying in a very much worse way.

 

[Vandalshandle]

I'm on the Board of Directors for a nearly-dead organization that was once a non-profit health care provider. It had always been on the edge, financially, for as long as I'd been associated with it; but a few years ago, a perfect storm of bad turns made the demise of this organization inevitable.

A couple years ago, our CEO just stopped doing his job, setting us adrift and blind, as we attempted to shut the organization down in an orderly manner. A young man was appointed to take his place, not because he was qualified, but because someone needed to take that position, and he was the one who volunteered. I cannot begin to describe the mess that he inherited, well enough to do it justice. It has included terrible legal battles with the IRS, with various state bureaucracies, and at one point, the resignations of all but two of the remaining board members (by law, we need to have at least three, but as of several months ago, there's just me and one other hanging on).

I've finally received word that the shutdown of our organization is imminent, that as of some time in January, it will be complete.

The young man who has been serving as interim CEO for the past couple years has aged noticeably, in the time that he's been carrying this responsibility. He took on a very bad situation, in which success was not a possibility; only failure, and the best to be done was to make this failure as orderly as possible. I cannot begin to imagine the stress he has surely been under, the burden that this job has place on him.

Not that there's anything at all to suitably reward this young man for his efforts, but if somehow, $25 million showed up in our budget, designated as a bonus for him, I would not object. He's definitely earned it.

Not that I know anything about the burdens and responsibilities that Sears' CEO and other top executives have had to bear in its downfall, but my own experiences in a small, dying nonprofit give me a rather different perspective on how to judge these executives, if to judge them at all.

Is Sears dying because its executives have done a bad job, or is it dying in spite of the very best possible efforts on the part of these executives? Are they really to blame for this demise, or is it to their credit that Sears is not dying in a very much worse way.

I am sure that it is all the fault of the employees who were laid off. The executives deserve a bonus for getting rid of them!

 

[Bob Blaylock]

I am sure that it is all the fault of the employees who were laid off. The executives deserve a bonus for getting rid of them!

It is difficult to imagine any point to your post, other than to demonstrate a complete and utter failure to understand the point of mine.

 

[Darkwind]

This is what we mean when we talk about a rigged economy. If Sears has $25 million to give bonuses to executives after closing over 100 stores, why is the company telling thousands of laid off employees they don't have the money to pay their severance?

Sears bankruptcy court OKs $25 million in bonuses for top execs

Well, that is wrong. However, did the employees have a contract that gave them a severance pay? If not, your complaint is worthless.

 

[Vandalshandle]

I am sure that it is all the fault of the employees who were laid off. The executives deserve a bonus for getting rid of them!

It is difficult to imagine any point to your post, other than to demonstrate a complete and utter failure to understand the point of mine.

I understand your post, son, but I have been through so many bankruptcies, receiverships, and liquidations, that I no longer share your naivetivity when it comes to executive bonuses.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

I understand your post, son…

I'm not your son. You profile does not disclose your age, but I doubt if you're old enough to be my parent.