Maureen Dowd is not a great writer, but she's a great columnist. She dishes out snark better than anyone. What's not to love? In today's column she rips into the mindless culture of excess at Citigroup. More on Dowd's fun in a moment.
First, let's be clear: Citigroup is a horrible, vile institution, probably the worst of all the big banks. It ran itself into the ground by taking on deeply troubled "assets" and by paying its executives (domestic and expat) way too much money. The bonuses and perks paid out to these feckless meatheads were outrageous enough before the bank took billions in taxpayer bailout money; the bonuses and perks paid out after that are simply criminal (or should be). And rather than cut into their bonuses and perks, the bank's fatcats chose to layoff 75,000 employees in 2008. Why share in the pain if you can make others bear most of it?
Then the news came out earlier this week that these clueless ignoranuses who run Citigroup were about to upgrade their corporate jet to the tune of $50 million -- this, on top of the news that John Thain (over at Bank of America) had remodeled his office for the tidy little sum of $1.2 million. Really. What is wrong with all these people? Even if their own internal compasses are so flawed as to fail to warn them that such actions are simply wrongheaded, don't these banks employ fleets of PR people whose job is to protect them from the "optics" of such boneheaded moves? Good lord. (Incidentally, Citigroup only dropped the plan for the new jet after the Obama Administration made its extreme displeasure evident.)
All of which brings me back to Maureen Dowd and her gift for snark, which sets my heart aflutter. Here's her column. I hope you enjoy it, as I did:
As President Obama spreads his New Testament balm over the capital, I’m longing for a bit of Old Testament wrath.
Couldn’t he throw down his BlackBerry tablet and smash it in anger over
the feckless financiers, the gods of gold and their idols — in this
case not a gilt calf but an $87,000 area rug, a cache of diamond
Tiffany and Cartier watches and a French-made luxury corporate jet?
Now that we’re nationalizing, couldn’t we fire any obtuse bankers and
auto executives who cling to perks and bonuses even as the economy is
following John Thain down his antique commode?
How could
Citigroup be so dumb as to go ahead with plans to get a new $50 million
corporate jet, the exclusive Dassault Falcon 7X seating 12, after
losing $28.5 billion in the past 15 months and receiving $345 billion
in government investments and guarantees?
(Now I get why a $400
payment I recently sent to pay off my Citibank Visa was mistakenly
applied to my sister-in-law’s Citibank Mastercard account.)
The
“Citiboobs” — as The New York Post, which broke the news, calls them —
watched as the car chieftains got in trouble for flying their private
jets to Washington to ask for bailouts, and the A.I.G. moguls got
dragged before Congress for spending their bailout on California spa
treatments. But the boobs still didn’t get the message.