Accountability is a burden that has to be shouldered by every responsible adult, whether it is handling your finances well through payday loans or keeping up with your budget.  You also have to be accountable in the workplace.  If you don’t discharge your duties correctly and in the manner prescribed by policy, then you will be held accountable for your actions, just like in any other area of your life, like getting a ticket for speeding.

However much that your average person may be an upright individual that will do the right thing as often as not, there are some that seem to think that the rules just don’t apply to them, and a lot of them are the heads of the companies that so many Americans work for.

Bank of America holding up the standard

The banking and finance industries were hit hard in the past few months, with some of the largest banks and finance and investment firms collapsing.  One of the biggest shockers was the closing of Washington Mutual, later picked up by JP Morgan Chase, and then the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the investment and finance powerhouse.  One of Lehman’s competitors narrowly avoided the same fate by quickly arranging a buyout by Bank of America, Merrill Lynch.

Merrill Lynch’s takeover was put together by the CEO, John Thain, in a quick effort to keep the company going in one way or another and keep it out of bankruptcy.  He asked for a bonus of $10 million right after the buyout, claiming that it was his efforts that kept the company from closing, which he withdrew when it was made known that selling the company is not the same as actually running it well enough to make a profit, and the company could have used some payday loans to keep it from being sold.

After the takeover, Bank of America announced that Merrill Lynch had not disclosed just how heavy their losses had been.  Despite the $20 billion in bailout funds that Bank of America received, it was discovered that Merrill Lynch, which had been a finance and investment powerhouse, had lost over $15 billion in the last quarter alone, and was over $100 billion in debt.  After the takeover was completed, there was a mutual agreement between Thain and Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis that he should resign, which he did.

Accountability is Key for anyone

Look at it this way – if you have a $100,000 mortgage on your home, and you stop paying on it but take out payday loans to cover your credit cards instead, you are going to get hit with a foreclosure or seizure.  Not taking care of your finances leads to disaster, which having to sell an enormous firm such as Merrill Lynch is, and the fact that the books were somewhat fudged so he could pull a fast one is some highly dishonest stuff.

However, resignation is still preferable to what happens in other places – two people in China who were convicted of adding a dangerous chemical to watered down milk to make it seem quality were sentenced to death for the offense.  Just remember, if you come up a bit short due to a sudden turn of events, you don’t have to sell your home off – you can get payday loans to cover a temporary gap.

Merrill Lynch executive seeks bonus for failing his company

Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain is currently seeking a bonus for 2008 in the amount of around $10 million.  This is after Merrill Lynch and Co. barely avoided bankruptcy and company failure by selling their company to Bank of America to avoid slipping away.  Merrill Lynch took a nosedive over the fiscal year in the wake of the collapse of the mortgage market, losing billions in the process.  The Merrill Lynch executive staff determined that the best course of action was to sell the company’s shares to Bank of America to avoid closing their doors.  According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal¸ Thain’s reasoning and justification for the bonus is that his actions, or selling the company, was the best option that they had on the table to avoid even more unpleasant alternatives since they weren’t getting government payday loans, and therefore because the company did not go bankrupt, he therefore deserves a healthy bonus to his already ample income as CEO for his prevention of the company going into insolvency, even though it is doubtful that at this point he needs extra money.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has termed his request as “nothing less than shocking.”  The board of directors appears to be in agreement with him, and is resisting the request for the bonus.  A bonus for an executive should be when the company turns a large profit, creates more jobs and revenue, instead of just merely not going bankrupt.  It seems that his pay should be docked, and not augmented.  Perhaps the employees of Merrill Lynch should get a bonus for putting up with such arrogant behavior from their management team.  The amount of executive compensation in Wall Street and other large companies has become an item of much media scrutiny of late, as many executives continue to receive large bonuses every year in addition to ample salaries regardless of how well their companies do or not.  It seems odd that people be rewarded for failure rather than for success, since the rest of us, including lower level Merrill Lynch employees, would be punished or stripped of our employment for failing to produce

The only way a person can be rewarded for failure

It seems as though the executive class of Wall Street are the only people who can get rewarded for not doing their jobs.  If we, us normal folks, were to miss a mortgage payment, we would get hit with penalties, interest, and fees.  If we don’t do what we are supposed to do for our employers, we would get disciplined, and if it happened enough times, terminated for noncompliance.  If we fall short in our financial obligations, we take extra measures to make up for a temporary shortage, like getting payday loans to cover if we have a sudden expense.  These Wall Street wizards look for extra cash for shorting their shareholders and employees.