I have not really scanned news yet today; is this getting coverage in the U.S.?

From the Scotsman:

World News: BP spill disaster 'down to bad management decisions'

Published Date: 06 January 2011
Decisions intended to save time and money created an unreasonable risk that triggered the largest offshore oil spill in US history, which could happen again without significant reforms, reported the top-level panel probing the BP blowout.

The commission findings - the result of a probe requested by President Obama after the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion - described systemic problems within the offshore energy industry and government regulators who oversaw it.

...

BP, Halliburton and Transocean, the three key companies involved with the well and the rig that exploded, each made decisions that increased risks of a blowout, but saved significant time or money.

Like, we haven't known this all along?

--the BB

What Maha said - updated with Kagro X

This is a follow-up to my earlier post - and Senator McCaskill's remarks, and President Obama's.

Barbara O'Brien, one of my favorite political commentators who writes at Mahablog, discusses the economy and some of the whining coming from Wall Street types these days, as they attempt to justify outrageous bonuses.

One choice paragraph:

The idea seems to be that because they work very, very hard, they deserve enormous amounts of money. The thing is, normally the economy doesn’t reward a person based on how hard he works. It rewards people for producing something that has value to other people. The fact is that America is full of people who work very, very hard and who are not paid well at all for it.

She really nails it here. A lot of hard work is done in this nation without huge financial rewards.

To this I might add: So get over yourself. People struggling at minimum wage are not likely to feel sympathy for your plight. Nor can I think of any reason why they should.

Anyway, I commend her entire article (and her blog) to you all. She also writes on Buddhism.

UPDATE:
Kagro X had a great comment at Daily Kos today:

"On Main Street, ‘bonus’ sounds like a gift," he said. "But it’s part of the compensation structure of Wall Street. Say I’m a banker and I created $30 million. I should get a part of that."

So, say you're a banker and you flushed $30 million down the toilet, which is the actual scenario we're looking at. When can we expect you to pay a part of that back?

Well, yes. Exactly.

--the BB

Why common folk think ill of Wall Steet

We are emerging from eight years with a president who was born on third base and thought he'd hit a triple. There is something ordinary folk resent about other folk who carry with them a sense of entitlement. Of course the world owes them deference, they seem to assert without a second thought. It's that sense of being owed something, most especially something the rest of the world does not perceive as having been earned.

Now, I have to acknowledge having received bonuses during my business career. I was in middle management and the bonuses were not immense. They were deemed a reward for my contributions and I, at least, am convinced I earned them. The largest came when I was involved in the formation of an R&D partnership and I worked incredible overtime hours and sacrificed my health in the process. I am quite certain that I earned every penny (and more).

I am thus not averse to the notion of bonuses as forms of incentive and reward.

However....

I do not believe they should take the form of incommensurate extravagance that goes along with executive salaries that do not truly reflect effort and performance. Businesses are built on the labor of workers and no amount of putative executive vision and leadership can justify making hundreds of times more than folks working on the line. That it should even be considered reflects the most outrageous values and clearly implies dehumanizing all others who make a company succeed. And if a company is not succeeding, exorbitant rewards at the top not only make no sense, they are a scandal and an affront.

So massive layoffs of workers combined with massive rewards to executives offend most people. And they should.

You may read Ben White's article at the New York Times today titled "What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses." David@Montreal sent it to me this morning. The dear man may have thought I needed something other than caffeine to kick-start me today.

Here is a stage-setting excerpt:

Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year.

That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller.

While the payouts paled next to the riches of recent years, Wall Street workers still took home about as much as they did in 2004, when the Dow Jones industrial average was flying above 10,000, on its way to a record high.

Here's the kicker:

On Wall Street, where money is the ultimate measure, some employees apparently feel slighted by their diminished bonuses. A poll of 900 financial industry employees released on Wednesday by eFinancialCareers.com, a job search Web site, found that while nearly eight out of 10 got bonuses, 46 percent thought they deserved more.

What can one say?

In the current economy I am grateful to be employed.
--the BB