Ward on Words

The Wall Street Journal has a laudatory story providing "five lessons to be learned from the Banana Man ." Samuel Zemurray, the Banana Man, is the typical American success story. Born in 1877, Zemurray was a Russian immigrant who in the later years of the 19th century "recognized his opportunity" in a pile of freckled yellow fruit. Little more than 100 years ago, the banana was an exotic fruit, known by few, and Zemurray was instrumental in widening its appeal and reach to consumers. To do so, Zemurray, in 1932, took over United Fruit, a huge multinational company that was struggling during the Great Depression. He turned the company around and "by the time he died in 1961, in the grandest house in New Orleans, he had been a hauler and a cowboy, a farmer, a trader, a political battler, a revolutionary, a philanthropist and a CEO." What a life! And here, from the WSJ, here are the top five lessons of the Banana Man - but as you read them, please note ...

Mitch Marrow has been on the ride of a lifetime, with a career that rivals the Rock's (Dwayne Johnson > The Rock >  The Tooth Fairy ) for twists and turns. Marrow started in the Ivy League, graduated to the NFL, transitioned to Wall Street and has now left the big leagues for a gig babysitting dogs. His mother is his partner. Here's the WSJ story with all the details ...

Lots of hullabaloo over Paul Ryan's op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, you know, the one with the headline that reads: The GOP Path to Prosperity. Given how devoted the GOP is to their very rich base, I shudder to think about how they define prosperity. And since their path prior to this has led to much of the nation being placed on rickety life boats in danger of being swamped by the wake of the big yacht sailing majestically away on rising tides, I don't have much hope this path will be built for the likes of me. But the scariest sentence ever seen in the WSJ is not found in Ryan's op-ed piece. Doesn't mean his piece isn't scary - it's actually very scary to think we will get rid of this massive post-recession deficit by apparently gutting Medicare for those of us not old enough to need it right now.   [Can we really say, as Ryan does, that Medicare has a flawed incentive structure that "rewards states for adding to the rolls?" Or are sta...

Two WSJ reporters, Evan Newmark and Dennis Berman, offer up some reasons to "hate GM." Reasons to hate GM include: — Falling share prices — The recently profitable automaker operates in an industry "plagued by overcapacity" — Incentive payments in US went up in 2010 Q4 — Rising price of oil a problem for an automaker dependent on the sale of its trucks — A small competitor (Volvo) has just gotten a big backer (China)

In recent months, there has emerged a terrible mythology around Henry Paulson's audacious plan to save our financial sector. The whispers have grown into kind of a roar: TARP will turn a profit for the government. To understand this mythology, we need to go back to those dark days of the fall of 2008, when our economy went into a free-fall of its own weight and it looked like nothing would save us from a Depression as terrible as the one that we call the Great Depression. Henry Paulson, then Bush's Treasury Secretary, cobbled together his rescue plan we all know as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. In September 2008, Paulson did his best to explain his new plan . Here's some of what he said back then: As we all know, lax lending practices earlier this decade led to irresponsible lending and irresponsible borrowing. This simply put too many families into mortgages they could not afford. We are seeing the impact on homeowners and neighborhoods, with 5 million...

Wall Street Journal has a fabulous story today about the success of one particular government entitlement program - the bailout of the banks. While unemployment remains high in America, while those on Social Security are likely to see cuts in their entitlement program in the near future, while our federal, state and local governments are seriously in debt, our financial sector gleams brightly as a vision of success. According to the WSJ story , the average monthly salary in 2009 in finance and insurance is nearly $12,000. A month. Up 23% from a year earlier. More than double the average in NYC. And that's just the wages paid to the new hires. Imagine the possibilities for growth in this sector!!! Especially when you can sell an instrument to one party and sell insurance (or take out insurance for yourself) that allows one to profit when the instrument you created blows up after you sell it off. (As long as you disclose the names of the people who purchase the insur...

Peggy Noonan wrote a terrible column in last weekend's Wall Street Journal. "He was supposed to be competent" is the headline, and it's about how Obama's incompetence is the reason the Gulf Coast is soaked in oil right now. Come again? Peggy Noonan was Reagan's songbird. Her speechwriting for the man who named a revolution was elegant, eloquent and inspirational. Does she forget that her boss considered government the problem? That businesses were dying under the yoke of regulation? That for America to succeed, a bloodless revolution needed to take place that severed the government from the responsibility of regulating much of American business? Because untethered, according to the Reagan Revolution, businesses could fly high and soar. And their profits would trickle down into the pockets of all of us on Main Street. Which would have been great, since salaries have remained stagnant since Reagan was in office. That trickle down money could have meant ...

One of the top stories in the Wall Street Journal this week is "Man vs. God," which asks Karen Armstrong, a religious writer and Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist to answer the same question: "Where does evolution leave God?" Leave aside for a moment the intriguing notion that the WSJ (whose readers tend to worship at the altar of Mammon) ran this story the week we commemorated both 9/11 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Let's look at how faith and biology influenced the answers of the two writers... Karen Armstrong starts out with a bang: "Evolution has indeed dealt a blow to the idea of a benign creator, literally conceived. It tells us that there is no Intelligence controlling the cosmos, and that life itself is the result of a blind process of natural selection, in which innumerable species failed to survive. The fossil record reveals a natural history of pain, death and racial extinction, so if there was a divine plan, it was cru...

Front page of the Wall Street Journal today had two stories that offer a vivid picture of where we are today as a nation. The first story , above the fold, tells the story of the fee bonanza Wall Street firms are experiencing, thanks to the work involved on the AIG breakup. The lawyers and bankers on the job "could collect nearly $1 billion for IPOs and advice..." The second story , below the fold, talks about how the "tide" has turned for Proctor & Gamble, with the company reporting an 18 percent loss in 4th quarter profits. The loss is attributed to the fact that "sales of their premium-priced brands shrank amid tightened consumer budgets." So in some stores, P&G has launched "Tide Basic" - a cheaper version of their popular laundry detergent "that the company freely admits isn't 'new and improved'" and lacks some of the capabilities of the full-strength product. According to the WSJ: "It's ver...

"Tarnished Citigroup looks like it could shine again!" That's the bold claim made by the headline writer over at the WSJ today. And why not? Cit's a group that's been pounded over the last few years. Stock prices down 50 percent this year (and compare that to the rise in Goldman and JP Morgan Chase stocks this year!) Apparently, the folks in the know are now thrilled about Citi because "it has put concerns to rest about its viability and capital adequacy." But there's just one catch... and it's not Catch-22. It's a lack of profit. The article offers this bit of info, for purposes of clarity: "A caveat: unlike most of its key rivals, Citigroup isn't profitable now and may not operate in the black next year either." And that's what I find so funny about this story. Who cares about profit when the stock price is a good deal and the feds have signaled their desire to prop up the bank at all costs? The tarni...

When reading a WSJ story with the headline "A Tale of Two Bailouts," my mind began thinking of Dickens and his rather famous opening paragraph for A Tale of Two Cities, the Dickensian tale of the French Revolution, when the unwashed masses rose up in violence against the privileged ruling class. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...." Interesting, how apt that quote remains today.... For Goldman, the Crash has truly been the cause of some very good times . However, for CIT, another TARP recipient, the worst of times are possibly approaching. It is a financial institution that still teeters on the verge of bankruptcy. And it is not yet clear if the feds will bail CIT out. So what does CIT's possible ...

"Despite the vast outpouring of commentary and outrage over the financial crisis, one of its most fundamental causes has received surprisingly little attention. I refer to the perverse incentives built into the compensation plans of many financial firms, incentives that encourage excessive risk-taking with OPM -- Other People's Money." That's how Alan Blinder's article in today's Wall Street Journal opens - by calling the Wall Street method of compensating its employees "perverse." Is the world coming to an end? Am I dreaming? A smack-down of Wall Street salaries in the WSJ seems too good to be true. Not clear if we are nearing Armageddon, but I'm definitely not dreaming. The WSJ is running an article attacking the compensation plans of the financial community. Now THIS is change we need! And Blinder isn't just talking about the highly publicized federally-funded bonuses granted to AIG and Merrill Lynch. He's talking about how...

On February 11, CEOs of eight debt-ridden banking firms appeared before Congress. The WSJ live-blogged the proceedings . To see what these leaders have to say is an eye-opener. It seems like no TARP was ever needed or wanted by these executives, according to their testimony.... J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon: “While we did not seek the TARP funds…to strengthen our already-strong capital base…we are using that money to expand the spirit of TARP.” (It was my understanding the spirit of TARP was to inject capital into firms that were desperately undercapitalized - so one must wonder why JP Morgan felt compelled to put the hand out for federal funding...) Bank of New York Mellon chief executive Robert Kelly (whose bank was apparently profitable throughout 2008): “We were strongly encouraged to participate [in TARP] and we did, very quickly.” (Who encouraged this savvy leader to take money his company didn't need? And why did he comply?) Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein: “...

According to a story in today's Wall Street Journal , the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) will issue a report today critical of the Troubled Relief Asset Plan's actions to date. TARP was designed by the Treasury Department to "protect and recapitalize our financial system as we work through the stresses in our credit markets." Today's report, says the Wall Street Journal, calls the bailout effort "mismanaged." Mismanaged or not, TARP makes me realize that I want to recharter myself as a bank. For it's as a bank that you become a recipient of the TARP's outstanding generosity. If you look at the organizations that have been granted money from TARP, you see familiar names like Etrade, Goldman Sachs, Capital One, Bank of New York, Northern Trust, Wells Fargo - you can find the list here . I encourage you to check it out. The list of companies is a list of the money guys - the investment companies that paid out huge salaries to people ...