When Prosperity Comes to Bad Men
Bankers Toast Themselves!


By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
CounterPunch
December 25-27, 2009


Surfeit begets insolence, when prosperity comes to a bad man.

Theognis, c. 545b.c.


I hope the President didn’t take it personally. I’m sure no offense was intended. Even though bank presidents have shown they can single handedly almost sink the economy, they can’t control the weather that prevented their making it to the meeting. Of course some people might wonder why they didn’t leave a day earlier. A lot of people who have a morning meeting scheduled with the President of the United States would be very anxious to make sure they were in town the night before so as not to miss the meeting. Such a meeting is heady stuff even for a bank president. My guess is that the men all had good reasons for not arriving in Washington D.C. the night before the meeting and it was not, as some might think, a lack of respect for the President of the United States. A number of factors explain their actions.

One is that it was the middle of the holiday season and a Sunday night two weeks before Christmas is a time when there are lots of holiday parties. It is important for bank presidents to be in attendance to show that even though 12 months ago they were being bailed out by, among others, the people at the parties as well as lots of other people their cheerful demeanors prove that they are not the least bit nervous about the economy or the state of their banks. Another reason they may have waited until Monday to travel to see the President (if they were not partying) was to give them additional time to work for the benefit of customers, employees and shareholders.

Lloyd Blankfein, president of Goldman Sachs (who missed the meeting), was very likely spending the evening doing rough calculations as to how to divide up $16 billion in bonuses among his thousands of employees. That is a complicated calculation. He may also have been working on the speech he would give to his employees to explain why some of them would get bonuses in stock instead of cash.

Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit missed the meeting because Citigroup had a $17 billion stock offering on the same day as the meeting with the President took place. Mr. Pandit spent the day convincing investors they should buy some of the stock that was being offered. Thanks to those efforts Citigroup received $425 million in fees from the offering. In Mr. Pandit’s place Citigroup’s chairman, Richard Parsons was to attend, but having better things to do on Sunday night than spend the night in the capitol he waited until Monday morning to travel and because of weather had to miss the meeting. He may have spent some time Sunday night working on helping those struggling to pay their mortgages who were hoping to qualify under the “Making Home Affordable Program.â€