Public Picks up Pitchforks
The sense of frustration among those who lost their jobs or savings or a large part of their pension funds is "fueled by reports of executives continuing to reap large rewards," the New York Times reported yesterday. "Some executives have already decided to forgo their bonuses, but companies continue to hand out hefty payoffs for executives of failed companies, igniting public outcries."

Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief of the Royal Bank of Scotland, learned this lesson this week when, after refusing to give up his post-bailout pension, found his home's windows smashed and his car damaged on Wednesday. So too did Luc Rousselet, the manager of a 3M factory in France, who was barricaded in an office for almost two days by workers demanding better severance packages for 110 employees being laid off.

Also this week, the New York Times carried a bitter letter of resignation from one of the American International Group (AIG) executives who've been getting raked over the coals by the public for taking big bonuses.

In the op-ed, Jake DeSantis, a vice president of the company's financial products unit, complains that he and most of his division were in no way responsible for the transactions that brought the company down. In fact, he points out he's spent long hours away from his family, agreed to an annual salary of $1, and has worked hard to dismantle the company, which he says is crucial to repaying the American taxpayers.

He further argues that neither he nor his colleagues should be cheated out of agreed-to payments — in his words — "any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house."

Still, he says he plans to give any bonus money he receives to organizations helping those suffering from the economic downturn.

On one hand, much of the public still views the bonuses as a taxpayer-supported reward for failure, given the company's huge losses and $170 billion emergency government bailout. Clearly, with vandalism and death threats against employees, things are still "pretty dicey," Gawker points out. Scary, even. And while giving up the bonus is admirable, it'd probably still be wise for a bonus-receiving executive at a bailed-out company to keep his or her head down and "stay off the op-ed pages until this thing settles down."

On the other hand, it seems like a positive thing that both sides of the argument are being aired, because obviously not everyone in the financial sector is guilty of misconduct, and certainly many of them have felt the same frustration the rest of the country has been feeling. Plus, if the banking system is going to recover, won't the public have to stop gnashing their teeth at everyone in it and accept that at least some of these people aren't the scum of the earth?

So, after several weeks of tension between the White House and Wall Street, President Barack Obama has called the CEOs of 15 of the country's largest financial institutions to Washington, with an eye toward mending the rift and taking a more collaborative approach to fixing the economy.

Meanwhile, The Consumerist is currently accepting votes for the 2009 Worst Company In America (WCIM). Based on comments so far, top-seeded AIG is going to be a tough one to beat in this year's WCIM bracket.

First-Year Law Student Has Peter Madoff's Assets Frozen
A New York state judge in Nassau County on Wednesday temporarily froze the assets of Peter Madoff, the brother of convicted Ponzi-scheme operator Bernard Madoff, in a lawsuit brought by a 22-year-old Brooklyn Law School student.

The first-year law student lost $500,000 of his inheritance to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme; his grandfather, who invested it for him, counted Madoff as one of his close friends.

Earlier this month, Madoff pleaded guilty to defrauding investors by using money from new ones to pay off old ones in a Ponzi scheme. "Before his Dec. 11 arrest, Madoff had told his thousands of clients that they had about $65 billion," Bloomberg News reports prosecutors as having said. "Madoff is in jail awaiting sentencing on 11 counts. He faces as much as 150 years in prison."

Although Peter Madoff hasn't been accused of wrongdoing in the alleged fraud, the lawsuit alleges that he served as sole trustee between 2003 and 2008 for a trust established for the student, Andrew Ross Samuels, in 1997 by his grandfather, Martin J. Joel Jr., and breached his fiduciary duty to the trust.

Peter Madoff, as chief rules-compliance officer for the firm, "had full knowledge that it was a fraudulent Ponzi-scheme and nothing more than an unprecedented fraud," the lawsuit alleges.

"He absolutely dropped the ball," Andrew's father, Howard Samuels, told New York's Newsday, which notes that others in his family lost money.

Walker Does Brel Does Motorama
Shopfloor.org recently brought to our attention this 1956 promotional film from General Motors Corp.'s Motorama, "Design for Dreaming," set to Scott Walker's performance of Jacques Brel's La mort:

Cheers.