Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg: Yes, I Am Completely Irrelevant
Obama’s pay czar Kenneth Feinberg confirmed what everyone has long known today when he weighed in on the year-end bonus of Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs: Feinberg is irrelevant.
The key points from today’s interview with Bloomberg:
- Feinberg “consulted” with Blankfein about the Goldman bonuses
- Goldman “followed [Feinberg's] prescriptions” about how bonuses should be paid
- Feinberg thinks Blankfein’s $9 million bonus is “too high”
- Feinberg has no authority over the Goldman bonuses
This begs several questions:
- Why did Feinberg consult with Blankfein about the Goldman bonuses if he has no authority over Goldman? Does he have nothing better to do?
- Why is Blankfein’s $9 million bonus “too high” if Goldman followed Feinberg’s prescriptions about bonuses? (Also, how can $9 million in stock in a record year be too high when Blankfein didn’t take a bonus at all last year? What would have been appropriate? Are the bonuses of hundreds of other Goldman bigshots also too high?)
- What, exactly, DOES Feinberg have authority over?
Bloomberg provides the answer to the last question:
Feinberg now oversees pay packages for executives of American International Group Inc., Chrysler Group LLC, Chrysler Financial Corp., General Motors Co. and GMAC Inc.
That’s a relief–at least he’s responsible for something. But it prompts us to ask again, why is Feinberg wasting taxpayer time and money on Goldman Sachs?
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See Also:
- Feinberg: Even A $9 Million Bonus Is Excessive For Blankfein
- Ken Feinberg Caves On Pay Caps For AIG
- Did Erin Burnett Ask Gasparino About Kenneth Feinberg’s Hand Lotion Or Hand Motion?
David Letterman Lands Saints Quarterback Drew Brees For Late Show (CBS)
New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees will sit down with David Letterman during tonight’s Late Show on CBS.
The Super Bowl’s Most Valuable Player completed 32 passes and threw two touchdowns last night during the Saints’s 31-17 win against the Indianapolis Colts.
“I was all meant to be, it’s all destiny,” Brees told the press as confetti showered over him in the Miami stadium. “We just believed in ourselves. We knew that we had an entire city, maybe an entire country behind us.”
Brees is a big get for Dave, but an inevitable one since CBS landed the big game’s broadcast. The Late Show held the late night ratings throne during NBC’s “experiment,” but he could face some trouble once Jay heads back to his old slot.
The news was announced on the Late Show’s official Twitter feed.
Watch part of Kate Couric’s CBS Evening News interview with Brees before the big game:
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See Also:
- Tech’s Sexy Super Bowl Ads
- How David Letterman Pulled Off A Secret Super Bowl Ad With Oprah Winfrey And Jay Leno
- How To Watch The Super Bowl Online
Conan O’Brien Staying Close To Fox, Selling His New York Apartment (NWS, GE)
The currently unemployed Conan O’Brien is quietly shopping his Central Park West penthouse duplex for a $35 million, according to the New York Post.
Conan relocated, with his wife Liza, from his home in New York to the West Coast to star in The Tonight Show.
Perhaps Conan wants to stay close to new opportunities. He is reportedly in talks with Fox to start a late night show with the network. News Corp’s TV production studios, Fox Television Studios, which produces USA Networks’ Burn Notice and Fox’s late night Wanda Sykes Show, is located in Beverly Hills.
If he sells his New York home for the asking price, Conan would make $25 million off the 18th floor penthouse, which he bought in 2007 for $10 million, the Post reports. That would add to the $45 million settlement he got from NBC to leave the network and never come back.
Conan has reportedly been paying some of his staff severance out of his pocket, so he might need some cash soon while he figures out his big TV comeback.
We can’t wait.
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See Also:
- David Letterman Wanted Conan For The Jay Leno-Oprah Spot
- Conan O’Brien Gathers ‘Facebook Army’ For Huge TV Comeback
- Conan O’Brien, Fox Plan a Show On FX First, Then Broadcast
Last Week’s Jobs Reports Show Economy Is Recovering!
Last week we got a pair of jobs reports that left a lot of people scratching their heads. Payrolls fell by 20,000 jobs while unemployment declined. How can we lose jobs while unemployment declines.
The first answer that many commentators give to that conundrum is that this must represent a decline in people being counted as actual job-seekers. They’ve just dropped out of the job market, so they no longer show up as unemployed.
But that answer doesn’t account for January’s numbers. The labor force actually grew by 11,000 people in January. That means that more people were seeking jobs than before. The old bearish-skeptic answer won’t work in today’s economy. Americans are returning to the job market, instead of fleeing in despair.
The biggest positive in the numbers is that the liquidation of construction jobs has kept up. During the bubble, far too much human capital was malinvested in the housing market. People developed relationships, skill sets, and years of experience performing in the unproductive housing sector jobs. As these jobs are lost, human capital is freed from the housing trap creating more potential for growth as labor resources are re-allocated.
And they are being re-allocated. Instead of merely being allowed to sit idle, the loss of 75,000 jobs in construction was largely offset by a surge in private sector, non-construction jobs of 63,000. The correction from bubble malinvestment of human capital is well underway.
The increase in manufacturing hours worked also implies that the liquidation of malinvestments and reallocation to activities now viewed as productive has begun.
There are, of course, new hazards. Government support for various areas of the economy—from homes, to finance, to automobiles, to stimulus funded private projects—may be resulting in a new round of malinvestment. Financial capital and human labor may be being drawn into new bubbles, not yet visible. Unfortunately, the signals for a recovering economy may just as well be the signals for a bubbling economy.
You will likely hear a lot about this in the next few months. Especially if unemployment ticks back up, which it may well do in the next few months. Bearish prognosticators will say that the January numbers were a “head fake” and predict the economy will quickly slip back to a recession.
But higher unemployment numbers will not necessarily indicate an economy retreating into recession. They may well be due to the accelerating rate of more hopeful workers returning to the jobs market.
Instead of looking at the aggregate unemployment or jobs creation numbers, we’ll need to pay attention to which areas jobs are being created and where they are being destroyed. If construction booms again—watch out, that’s probably a bubble. If other areas are growing, we need to see whether these reflect economic sectors with long-lags between initial investment and delivery of goods to consumers—these are also bubble indicators.
Healthy jobs growth will be a mix of some long term projects and a lot of emphasis on consumer facing jobs. Retail, for instance, added 42,000 jobs in January. This most likely reflects the ground level view of store managers with best access to consumer spending habits.
Another great indicator will be apartment rents. These have been in rapid decline, and may well decline further. But apartment rents are driven by household formation—the sign that workers believe their income and employment have become steady enough to move out of their parents homes or decouple from roommates. Watch this to grow if good jobs are being created.
In short, the thing to watch for is not just whether we have overcome the “jobless recovery” phase of the economy. It’s whether we are adding jobs in healthy—non-bubble—sectors. And January’s jobs reports at least points to reasons for hope.
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See Also:
- TrimTabs: Here’s Why The Real Jobs Loss Number Was 5x Worse Than What The BLS Reported
- CHART OF THE DAY: It’s Official: Obama Is Creaming Bush When It Comes To Jobs
- Unemployment: 9.7%
Demand Media Is Taking In $200 Million A Year From Robo-Content
From the New York Times…
Never heard of Demand [Media]? You’ve probably seen its products.
According to the company, its YouTube videos are streamed 2.5 million times daily. And in those five days it took me to write this column, the company published 20,000 new articles or videos about losing weight, learning new tricks on a skateboard or tips for job hunting
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- AOL’s Robo-Reporters Will Swarm You Like Locusts
- AOL Asks For 2,000 $50 Assignments On SXSW
- AOL’s New Fast-Food-Content Strategy Means The End Of Journalism You Actually Enjoy