“The Redecorator”

Thain has since been ousted from Bank of America and has promised to pay for the pricy stuff from his personal funds.

Personally funds = get-away loot from the heist

Great toon, Pat.

Agreed, this man and so many like him are truly a disgrace. Why they are not put in stocks in the town square with all their earnings garnished for this despicable behavior is beyond me.

Get ready to bend over. His interior decorator now works for Obama the US Tax Payer.

Ha! I read that. It’s true–the same guy did Thain’s office as is doing the White House.

A “commode on legs” for $35,115. What a stool?

The “Free Market” economy in the US is to privatize the profits and socialize the losses. There is no downside risk for these clowns. If they screw up, they get a 100 million dollar parachute. In the last round of bail-outs, the top ten exec at Wachovia, who ran the bank into the ground, divided up $100 million to go away.
The Chinese ‘free market” is looking more attractive. Over there if an exec screws up and gets caught, they get executed if they don’t commit suicide first.

Execution or suicide…seems reasonable to me. I’M BEING SNARKY! Wait. $28,000 for curtains? Cap the bastard.

But to be a little more realistic, there is no way in hell that these guys ran these mortgage scams and bundled all of this bad debt and didn’t commit a lot felonies. When the mortgage business was hot, it was a joke that the bankers would sit around a table and pass bad paper around, take their fees top and sell it to the next guy and on.. and on.

This cartoon is great for the quality of the cartoon and because in one picture it tells the real story.

The story for me is not about one person and greed. It is about the corporate structure itself where in many cases the corporate board of directors are no longer responsible representatives of the stockholders with their best interest at heart. Another problem is that often stockholders have no loyalty to the corporation so they are only interested in immediate gratification, and as long as that is taken care of they do not care about long range plans or investments or what the board and president are doing with the company. A corporate society where members of the board compete with other boards on who has the most expensive president and where the needs of the board are more allied with the presidents needs then what is good for the employees or the country. Where everything is about numbers and immediate gratification and people are like images on a computer screen that can be eliminated without any feelings. Where the feeling of family between employee and employer, and customer and the company have been lost as corporations get to big to fail.

Let us remember that corporate officers and the board are not the ones complaining so if the people do not care where is the problem?

Rich

Are you serious?

Obama chasitizes Wall Street and then hires their decorator!?

Speechless….

I wonder how much BOBO is going to pay for his trash can.

Great cartoon. We have been in the process of re-doing a 1950s house and know that it can get very expensive but that guy spent more on his area rug than we spent on our whole kitchen. I need to show this to my husband so he can relax about the cost. LOL

Thanks for your great insight. The cartoons are excellent and always right on the point.

Shouldn’t that be “how much WE are going to be paying for BOBO’s trash can”?

Here’s what Thain spent on this office:

- Total bill: $1.22 million.

- Fee for decorator Michael Smith, also Michelle Obama’s interior decorator: $837,000.

As with the Greek columns, the $170million swearing in, you should know by now that the sky is the limit when it comes to the Obamas celebrating themselves. It’s the rest of us who are told to economize.

The most gigantic hypocrite ever.

Another great cartoon, Pat.

What’s the toughest job on the Planet? What does it pay?

Well, when you are working or on call 24/7, that’s a tough job: President of the United States.
Pays $400,000, plus full health care,along with a $50,000 expense account, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account and $19,000 for entertainment. Upon retirement, a President receives Executive Level 1 (cabinet Secretaries) pay of $191,300 per year. Not including Secret Service costs or office costs.

That should be the top pay for any public corporation.

It’s the rest of us who are told to economize.

Its called ACORNOMICS.

That depends on the cost. At some price point your ordinary trash can becomes a Parchment waste can. I guess people with money to burn need an upgrade to dispose of their parchment, which itself was an upgrade from mere paper, which became necessary when they put aside pens and pencils and bought their first writing instrument…

Pat, your excellent cartoon and comments highlight the outrage most ordinary people must feel at the corporate greed that has been rampant on Wall Street for years. People like Thain have been able to get away with this pillage of the people because most of us have blindly put our trust in corporate executives. I have for years thought the salaries and bonuses of these corporate executives is outrageous and unjustifiable.

I think we all have some responsibility for the situation we find ourselve in. How many of us listen to corporation conference calls or know how to read and understand the implictions of a company financial statement? How many object to the fact that some business people sit on multiple corporate boards, and how many of these board members do more than rubber stamp the reports of the CEOs and CFOs of corporations?

Stockholders of companies have blindly signed off on proxies sent to shareholders without bothering to read the annual company reports and allowed the boards of directors to justify these outrageous salaries and bonuses. As long as the companies were making money and the stockholders were enjoying the fruits of a bull market, little objection was raised. Now, as the economy is collapsing, the corporations are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and stockholders are losing tons of money, all of a sudden we take notice, cry foul and try to stop the bleeding.

Rich, I thought your comments hit the mark very well.

If stockholders were allowed by law to sue management and boards, the executives could be held accountable for their choices. Stockholders sign proxies because they are often invested in Mutual Funds and who could possibly keep track of decisions made by the boards of every company? If you don’t go through the quarterly reports, you don’t even know which companies you are invested in and then you have to research each separately. It isn’t feasible and that’s why they can get by with their mismanagement.

While I agree Thain is an SOB, doesn’t anyone else see the “humor” in Meechelle serving $100 lb. Japanese beef to celebrate the house passage of the “economic recovery” bill? Pat, next ‘toon…..

Our local newspaper printed this information also a few days ago. Since then I have noticed NOT ONE COMMENT in the letters to the editor or on the editorial page about the use of this same decorator by the Obamas.

I remember when Jackie Kennedy redecorated the White House and it became a big news story, mostly positive. But since then, I’ve wondered why the White House needs to be redecorated so much.

My own house has not really been redecorated for a long time. It may need it–especially if you watch those shows on HGTV–but I am comfortable with it. It’s home. I am sure the White House is not looking too ragged at this time and could be lived in as is. (I’m hoping it would be only a four-year commitment. )

I read a couple of days ago that Meechelle is redecorating HER WH with Pottery Barn everything, because that’s the style she likes. Also, after second thought, she IS hiring a nanny for the girls.
(To be continued…)

And Meechele has confirmed that she is pregnant. I suspected that this was going to happen. Wonder how the new baby’s room will be decorated…

Two things about White House renovations: 1. there are two separate parts of the White House. 1. There is the people’s house or where government work is done, and 2. There is the First Family’s living quarters.

1. Jackie Kennedy’s renovations of the non-living quarters of the White House were needed. The White House is, as she said, the people’s house. And in the 1960’s it was in major disrepair from a lack of attention both architecturally and in a decorative sense. The White House is a museum of our nation’s history. Yet when the JFK administration began the rooms were a hodge-podge of styles and history. She oversaw the restoration and upgrade of a historical museum. The most important considerations to keep in mind however, JFK was not presiding over a broken economy and all of the upgrades were paid for by private funds not tax payer monies.

2. In addition to being a historical museum the White House is also the home of the First Family. And that home is a separate section of the White House. Every First Family is given an allowance (paid for by the tax payer) to decorate or redecorate that part of the White House – the family quarters – to reflect their personal tastes. That is what Smith is doing to the Obama’s living quarters.

I do not begrudge the Obama’s making their living quarters reflect their taste while doing the people’s business. Even if I disagree with much of Obama’s policies and dislike him personally, they can redecorate their family quarters any way they wish and hire who ever they wish to do the redecorating as long as they do not go over the amount of the allowance proscribed by law.

You have GOT to be kidding me!!!! Sheesh.

Great toon, Pat!

Pat, another great piece of work!
Keep your sketch pad handy, for I think you will have a bonanza of material to work from!

Thanks Sassy–I agree that it will not be a lean year for cartoonists!

Dox X–You are 100% correct, but a problem is that these reports are almost impossible to understand. I get these booklets from my (very) modest investments from time to time and it is gibberish to me.

Don’t we either need more watchdogs or really stiff penalities for those who make obviously greedy decisions that were bad for the rest of us? Sort of like the trust we put in medical doctors and what can happen if they screw up big time.

You are SOOOOOOOOO right about that. The toon practically draws itself! (Now if I can find the time…)

For that much money it could be called a “receptacle” instead of “can”.

A refuse receptacle by any other name would smell as foul.

Well said…..

I don’t think the American people would have a problem with that…..

Hey Pat – Loooove the toon! And everyones comments have been hysterical. Question – How do you find the time?? NQ should do an annual best of Pat Racimora cartoons. They come and go too fast in a daily post.

Thanks Kinda–I was thinking the same thing. We didn’t buy an area rug because it was too expensive we thought–$399.99. LOL is right!

Thanks Choo Choo–It’s therapy for me, really. My day job is all numbers and technical style writing. To work on a toon most days sets me free for a while.

I thought Granny Robinson was taking care of her girls. Why would she need a nanny?

Pregnant? Where did that come from?

Well, as I said, only the very best for the Obamas. She doesn’t know the “how to” of elegance and has little taste. Mostly, MEchille thinks that so long as it costs a lot, it must be great. Then she tries to put one across on the public that they all dress in J. Crew. Maybe sometimes but the little kid’s outfits were custom made by J. Crew. Not available to the little people until next Fall. I doubt there was much savings there…which wasn’t the point…it was all about image.