I’ve already whined about Merrill Lynch and the tone deafness that accompanies spending $1.2 million on an office. And progress, too — when publicized, John Thain agreed to give the money back.
Now Citigroup, that little bank that the American taxpayer has been investing billions of dollars to stay afloat, decides to buy a new corporate jet for $50 million. And, since you can’t tell the difference between a dollar of profits and a dollar contributed to the bank by the taxpayer, we’re paying for it. Or were. In another case of “we’ll do the right thing — if we get caught,” Citigroup took a pass on the plane with a little encouragement from the light of day:
The high-flying execs at Citigroup caved under pressure from President Obama and decided today to abandon plans for a luxurious new $50 million corporate jet from France.
The decision came 24 hours after the banking giant, which was rescued by a $45 billion taxpayer lifeline, defended buying the state-of-the-art Dassault Falcon 7X — one of nine to be flying in U.S. skies — as a smart business deal.
The jet, the epitome of corporate prestige and privilege, can carry 12 passengers in elegant comfort.
ABC News has learned that Monday officials of the Obama administration called Citigroup about the company’s new $50 million corporate jet and told execs to “fix it.”
The executive class with their assumption of entitlement — and it has to be an economic class all by itself now — just doesn’t get that when thousands of workers are losing their jobs because the company can’t sustain costs that spending money on worldly perks ticks people off.
But then another thought popped into my head:
If corporate executives can’t figure out that their worldly perks would cause an outrage in the time of the worst recession since the Great Depression, how can they think they can lead their companies into a profitable future? They can’t see anything coming at them.
Boards of Directors? You’ve got a culture to change. Time to get working on that.
No related posts.
How confident am I in the executives that run my company? Not at all! They have proven over and over and over again that they are dumb, dumber and dumbest! Similiar to the guys that ran Wall Street.
How confident am I in the executives that run my company? Not at all! They have proven over and over and over again that they are dumb, dumber and dumbest! Similiar to the guys that ran Wall Street.
So why do we work for these guys anyways. Then I remembered, they own the capital or have convinced the goverment to give them the capital.
Maybe Karl Marx was right, it was just taking capitalism a few hundred years to decay…
Management is a practice, just like Cubicle Warrior is a practice. What has been frustrating me over the course of the last couple of years is that management hasn’t seemed to be able to deal with “unprecedented” events and know where the right buttons to push are in the company to get back on track.
I can see the need for layoffs; I have written about it. But the amount of damage can be greatly lessened if we can advance management practice a bit.
So why do we work for these guys anyways. Then I remembered, they own the capital or have convinced the goverment to give them the capital.
Maybe Karl Marx was right, it was just taking capitalism a few hundred years to decay…
Management is a practice, just like Cubicle Warrior is a practice. What has been frustrating me over the course of the last couple of years is that management hasn’t seemed to be able to deal with “unprecedented” events and know where the right buttons to push are in the company to get back on track.
I can see the need for layoffs; I have written about it. But the amount of damage can be greatly lessened if we can advance management practice a bit.
[...] all that has happened over the last several weeks — a plane canceled and office renovations repaid — haven’t the leaders of our bailed out banks caught on [...]