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Paying a $25 million or $30 million bonus to a Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase or Morgan Stanley higher-up this year is obscene because none of these firms would exist if our government and others hadn't stepped in to save the world financial system. If these companies have all that money around, largely courtesy of us, they ought to send it to the U.S. Treasury. But paying a $250,000 bonus on top of a $150,000 salary to a worker bee is a different story...
Where's the Justice? None of the people who presided over the catastrophes at the likes of Citi and AIG and Merrill Lynch are likely to go to jail. That's because incompetence and arrogance aren't criminal offenses. If that seems a bit unfair, so does the government's rescue program that saved some and not others, depending on political and social criteria. The most recent example: Delphi Corp., GM's former parts division that was spun off a decade ago, which recently emerged from bankruptcy proceedings. White collar Delphi retirees are having their pensions whacked, but United Auto...
...vehicle make weight comparisons tricky). The MRAP program, championed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, has won praise from soldiers for the protection the vehicles offer them from roadside bombs. There are some 12,000 MRAPs in Iraq, and 3,600 of the original MRAPs in Afghanistan, up from almost none last year. The U.S. has spent nearly $30 billion on some 20,000 MRAPs, including $1.4 million each for the M-ATVs earmarked for Afghanistan. (See pictures of a photographer's experience...
...none of this is to mention that Afghanistan is a country swimming in the heroin trade. Illicit narcotics is conservatively put at $3 billion a year - about 15% of Afghanistan's GDP. Finding someone not one way or another involved in it is next to impossible. (See six ways...
...That is complete nonsense. Ahmad Wali was already accused of dealing in drugs. I investigated it thoroughly: naturally, none of it is true." - Hamid Karzai, denying Wali Karzai's involvement in the drug trade (Der Spiegel...