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+--- Thread: Investigative Reporting (/showthread.php?tid=6352)
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- Dustie - 03-18-2009
edit: removed my mean comment
- Diggles - 03-18-2009
Warren Buffet Wrote:"It gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head."
Actually gold and silver besides being fairly rare both have very special properties that set them apart from more common metals, and give them great utility.
- Slamz - 03-18-2009
Riz Wrote:Here, let's try the same track and just offer this http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200903170003I read the first couple paragraphs of this link and gave up. Does it get any better later on? What I read was just one big ad hominem attack on Cohen that says nothing about his examples or findings and simply attacks him as a person.
At least Cohen raised some really good points and some interesting facts to support his position.
Your link is just, "Oh yeah? Well.... Cohen is a poopoo head!"
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html
Quote:An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form:It's like the author you linked read this and followed it step by step.
1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B makes an attack on person A.
3. Therefore A's claim is false.
The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).
- Dustie - 03-18-2009
Slamz Wrote:At least Cohen raised some really good points and some interesting facts to support his position.
Yep. The main point being that people with a lot of their net worth in the game, working at these companies, didn't pull out. So how can we expect Cramer to know more than the insiders? It's just silly.
- Singularity - 03-18-2009
Our economy would run a lot smoother if I were in charge
- bonestomper - 03-18-2009
god i hate this.
our "economy", "stock market", "capitalism", "et al"; is not a go cart you can spin on a dime.
it is more of the Tanker Ship that actually takes a few miles to stop.
while i do not like Cramer, he was correct that for about 10 years the system worked (when the shit started going south that few saw) and no one could have foreseen how the shit was actually going to shake out.
i blame a whole different set of players in this game than most people. i don't blame AIG, the Regulators, the FED, the housing market, speculators, Madoff, who ever.
i blame S&P and Moodys. these are the ratings agencys that are paid to evaluate the risk of a company and give a honest response. if i decide to invest in a risky company, then fine it is my call (and my reward if i call it right). but if they are paid to evaluate a company and call it safe or safer or whatever; they are the trusted agency that is supposed to tell me that the standard "safe" investments no longer are.
and here is a little divergence. they don't have to tell me why. i feel that is the job of the financial reporter. i just want a rating that is correct.
if they did not see it, there is only 2 conclusions. either no one saw it, or they were on the take. if no one saw it, get off of Cramers ass because he couldn't see it either. if they were on the take, stand them by the wall right after the lawyers.
- Riz - 03-18-2009
Actually, many players DID know it was unsustainable. There have, since, been several articles talking to them. Funny thing was, when they SAID things were going south, the media didn't want to talk to them.
As for the article, I sent it as an example of terrible journalism...the same as Cohen, who is an idiotic mouthpiece for the left.
Fuck, quit being goddamn cheerleaders and admit that the free market fucking fails when the execs have no goddamn stake in the company more than a short-term profit so they can get their next motherfucking million dollar bonus. I pulled my money out of the idioticy because even I saw that it was too overblown to be sustainable. Thus, I lost nothing on this whole debacle.
- Dustie - 03-19-2009
Riz Wrote:Actually, many players DID know it was unsustainable. There have, since, been several articles talking to them. Funny thing was, when they SAID things were going south, the media didn't want to talk to them.
As for the article, I sent it as an example of terrible journalism...the same as Cohen, who is an idiotic mouthpiece for the left.
Fuck, quit being goddamn cheerleaders and admit that the free market fucking fails when the execs have no goddamn stake in the company more than a short-term profit so they can get their next motherfucking million dollar bonus. I pulled my money out of the idioticy because even I saw that it was too overblown to be sustainable. Thus, I lost nothing on this whole debacle.
While I disagree with almost everything you've said, I do agree about aligning the executives. Company management need to be incentivized to align their goals with the long term goals of the company and it's ownership.
- Slamz - 03-19-2009
That was Cohen's point:
These execs DID have a stake in the company. A sizable part of their compensation is in the form of stock and they all lost a lot of money (or potential money) when the stocks tanked.
They're still rich, but they'd be many times richer if their company didn't fail.
I'm not sure how you could more closely tie execs to company success. Maybe ONLY pay them in stock options that vest over time so that it's in their best interesting to stick around and see the stock go up.
Or what about Chris Dodd?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/18/aig.bonuses.congress/index.html
Quote:(CNN) -- Senate Banking committee Chairman Christopher Dodd told CNN Wednesday that he was responsible for language added to the federal stimulus bill to make sure that already-existing contracts for bonuses at companies receiving federal bailout money were honored.So there's part of the reason these execs are getting their bonus pay with bailout money: the government arranged it for them.
- Dustie - 03-19-2009
Yep, Dodd is in big trouble. I happen to agree with him that you want to pay the people who understand the derivatives contracts to unwind AIG properly, but America certaintly doesn't agree with either of us.
edit: American = America
- Vanraw - 03-19-2009
I think the whole exec compensation issues is broke in the country. It is completely out of control, and the board of directors that are suppose to govern such things have zero motivation to do so. Seriously, 500 times the average salary is crazy for people that run companies into the ground. And then they have golden parachutes so they cant possible loss.
Looks Home depot. Hundreds of millions to the guy that drove the company into the ground.
Germany has a law that limits compensation to a factor of the average employee salary. I think this would be dangerous in America, but at the same time Im trying to understand how capitalism is going to resolve it on its own.
500 times the average salary of an employee is criminal.
- Breand - 03-19-2009
Riz Wrote:Fuck, quit being goddamn cheerleaders and admit that the free market fucking fails when the execs have no goddamn stake in the company more than a short-term profit so they can get their next motherfucking million dollar bonus.
It's for the exact reasons that we DON'T have a true free market system as to why they act this way. Why be a responsible exec when the government will just bail out your company if you fuck up?
- Breand - 03-19-2009
Dustie Wrote:Yep, Dodd is in big trouble. I happen to agree with him that you want to pay the people who understand the derivatives contracts to unwind AIG properly, but American certaintly doesn't agree with either of us.
http://www.schiff2010.com/
=)
- Dustie - 03-19-2009
Breand Wrote:Dustie Wrote:Yep, Dodd is in big trouble. I happen to agree with him that you want to pay the people who understand the derivatives contracts to unwind AIG properly, but American certaintly doesn't agree with either of us.
http://www.schiff2010.com/
=)
Quote:Chris Dodd appears to be set on giving opponents more and more ammunition against him.
Dodd apparently entered language into the stimulus bill guaranteeing "contractually obligated" bonuses "agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009.†Bonuses just like AIG's, in other words.
AIG and its employees, over the past two decades, has contributed over a quarter million dollars to Dodd campaigns.
Hah, I didn't even know about that part. That makes it even better.