MONEY
MONEY
PUBLISHED IRISH MAIL ON SUNDAY, MARCH 14TH 2010
Money, money, money, must be funny…Well true to the song, it’s made hilarious headlines recently. In the context of on going credit crisis havoc, the following financial revelations are a hoot! Hear the one about RBS, 84% owned by the British taxpayer? They’ve set aside £1.7billion for bonuses despite reporting £3.6billion pre- tax losses for 2009. 100 of their investment bankers will receive over a million pounds each, tee hee. Or ‘ere’s a funny thing I read on the way to writing this article – Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs CEO, is only getting a $9 million bonus for 2009! There had been rumours it would be $100 million! He got $67.9 million in their last bumper year – 2007! Boom, boom. In between of course there was that emergency Federal Reserve bail-out – But hey, they paid it back! It’s billions under the bridge by now.
What’s the principle here? That if you work, say, in a bakery you expect the bonus of free buns now and then. So if it’s money you deal in, go on, bag a sack for yourself, lad. But there’s limits with baked goods – Cooky doesn’t want to end up living in a cave of old cake, waking up his bed a mass of mouldering muffins, his sofa a throne of stale sponge, just because he can. Not so with money – enough is never enough, evidently.
You know what I don’t get? Why would a guy require that much money? What’s the thought process: Hey, must own loads of abodes, each with room enough to swing a blue whale. Must have top notch in everything, from my top-notch socks to the top-notch trophy that’s my wife. Must have paddocks and horses and children with posh childhoods like you read about in old English novels about children with posh childhoods. Must have floors made of diamonds and unparalleled walls. And sofas composed of stacks of fifties beside all my swimming pools in all my 50 acre back yards in all the abodes I own – At all the best addresses globally, costing eye-watering prices, even in economic crisis’ …Must have, must have, must have, without end – The religion of Moolah . Amen.
Meanwhile, this end of the global village, business people argue on Pat Kenny’s Frontline that ‘we’ need to cut the minimum wage. All €8.65 an hour of it. And I watch wondering does the debate make Pat uncomfortable. Given his own remuneration has oftentimes taken the spotlight. I had to laugh when, in a newspaper interview a while back, he mentioned that one of the factors in calculating his fat fee is the fact he’s a freelancer. Ha, ha. Imagine if invoicing for, say, a week’s minimum-wage work, you went: ‘ There you go, my bill for €337.35. Plus 2 grand to cover the insecurity – You know how it is, ask Pat. ’ Ha, ha, ha.
On another of Pat’s Frontlines a woman in a special audience of ‘the young generation’ complained about the kind of ‘jobs’ she’s seeing advertised – Like the one in a call centre, 39 hours a week, for a €100 on work experience. ‘That’s less that €3 an hour’ she pointed out. ‘People should be willing to work for nothing’, Bill Cullen, blasted. The well-know businessman and author of ‘It’s a long way from penny apples’, was there as honorary oldie.
‘It’s better that lying in bed doing nothing,’ he continued .He was up at 4am as a nipper! No shoes! Working for nuthin’ , according to himself. Jays, no wonder the apples were only a penny. But we’re a long way from that now: ‘I’d love to work for nothing’ said another fella. ‘But I can’t. I’ve got a €2000 a month mortgage to pay.’ Well then it’s 195 hours a week for you down the call centre, do the math. That’s the apartment bill covered. For the rest, get off your backside, get a pram and apples and get to it. A Bugaboo full of Granny Smiths and the burning desire to sell, that’s all you need, as you traipse barefoot through the mean streets of post-Tiger Ireland toward that gleaming destination – The Future – Da Place where tings is always better, in da end. What’s that you say? There’s only 168 hours in a week? That’s In-The-Box-Thinking, bud. Nobody who ever got anywhere, got there by accepting the ordinary time/space paradigm… probably.
Oh the thwarted energy, talent and education in that ‘young generation’ audience. Oh what’s a nation to do with them? Maybe they should be made build follies for their dole (‘it’s all work experience’) – Although, hang on, all those empty apartments complexes, empty offices, make-no-sense hotels, isn’t the country riddled with enough follies already, silly me.
While the issue of working for seven, six, five, four, three, two, one and, bingo, zero euros an hour is the hot topic on Frontline, the news headlines scream – ‘Hundreds of jobs lost as leading retailers close.’ ‘Over 26 000 mortgage holders in arrears.’ ‘ The €54bn the government spent on loans previously worth €80bn, could fall as low as €2bn in value.’
But the best financial headline I saw in recent weeks comes from back over States- side, courtesy of satirical news org. The Onion: ‘U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion’.
Ha, Ha, there’s nothing much to add after that…
