Mr. Savings
This morning I received my daily news update in my inbox, one story caught my eye,
"John Thain's $87,000 Rug". I recognized the name, he's Merrill Lynch's CEO, so I read the article. Here's a bit:
"According to documents reviewed by The Daily Beast, Thain spent $1.22 million of company money to refurbish his office at Merrill Lynch headquarters in lower Manhattan. The biggest piece of the spending spree: $800,000 to hire famed celebrity designer Michael Smith, who is currently redesigning the White House for the Obama family for just $100,000.""Big ticket items included $87,000 for an area rug, four pairs of curtains for $28,000, a pair of guest chairs for $87,000 and fabric for a "Roman Shade" for $11,000"Just reading that pissed me off. This is a guy who's spending over a million decorating a freaking office, when millions of Americans are jobless and struggling to feed their families.
That $87,000 for a stupid rug could feed families for months. Sometimes I just don't get people.
Does it upset you to see these CEO's throw around money on unnecessary things when the rest of the country is struggling to live?
dollarish.com
Comments (25)
Well, they earned the money... why not? We need people like that to spurge... if everyone saves then busniesses are going to go down the drain.
A little bit... but at the same time... that money is going into someone's pocket right? Let's hope their spreading it around to someone else's pocket too...
I should also say that I totally agree that spending that much money to rehab an office is ridiculose and that I think his company might want to reconsider him...
It's his money. We can't all cry because somebody is having it bad? You think the economy is bad in the USA- there are places in the world where people don't even have food. I feel bad for those people, but I'm still having three square meals a day. And if I ever were rich I would want a damn good rug in my office.
if you can afford it why not and i prefer people spending than greedy people who TAKE/STEAL money from other people. besides if you think about it, money spent still goes back to the country anyways. there are people who donate money, time and effort to help out other people, not everybody is selfish and greedy. the man aint doing anything illegal/wrong so no big deal.
It doesn't bother me. They made the money, they can spend it how they want. The trickle down effect will now happen and his money will be spread out by the people who sold him the rug et cetera. Spending has to happen or the economy will fail even more ya know?
@loveandpolitics@xanga - You're right. It's exactly his money, and we have no right to judge but the way he spends his money, we have every right to criticize.
x
It's not a big deal if it's their money. Actually, at a time like this I think it's crucial that the consumer market stays afloat. However, 87 grand for a rug DOES seem a little excessive.
Yes! My husband was laid off for 6 weeks at the beginning of December. No Christmas bonus this year. No ham, either. But the CEO's still got their 1 million dollar bonuses.
i do. completely. esp when i know people are laying off from Merrill Lynch while he's spending million of dollars to fix his office.
1 million dollars - it can save a dozen of jobs.
oh, and it's clear that it's not HIS money. it's company expense! how can a company approves such expense while it's asking for help from the government? it's like executive AIG retreat.
yeah, well he coulda done something productive at least with that money. Geeze.
if people dont spend, stores are going to close and more people are going to lose their jobs. its a vicious cycle.
Hmm, wonder if this had anything to do with him leaving Bank of America(Merril Lynch)
3 words: W. T. H
-_-
I think if it had been HIS personal money, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But the fact that he was laying people off while spending that amount of money is what made me a little ill.
Since he is using company money, that does irritate me a bit. If it were his personal money, I wouldn't care at all. In fact, I encourage rich people to splurge. Why? Because that money definitely goes towards the economy.
The rich people just don't care. Of course, the most we can do, is get rich ourselves, and help everyone else. Because apparently no one else is going to.
shit, I'm like the queen of splurging, so I can't judge.
I agree with peacelove__CALLIE. Since he is specifically using company money that could be given to his employees, it kind of ticks me off. especially since I'll bet his old office looked just fine before "refurbishing" it. If it was his own money, then I wouldn't mind so much, even though personally, I would never spend that kind of money. But at least he'd be using his nice padded salary to help the economy.
if they have the money to spend, i guess they are helping out the economy, rich people don't have worries, as many people mentioned before me. but if you think about, celebrities have always splurged on thousand dollar dresses they'll only wear once, and even then when there were fewer people in America struggling, what about people elsewhere? They buy unnecessary things to keep their image up when people are starving in places beside America. It isn't just now, some people just have the money to splurge constantly, they're rich and it's not their responsibility to help out struggling people. Would be nice if there were fewer struggles in the world though wouldn't it?
I don't think the people who made the first few comments read this post or the article. It is clearly the company's money that was spent and this is while he was preaching to his company about cutting cost and laying off people. The whole trickle down effect generally does not work for two reasons: 1) Time: since it is focused on a specific group it will take a considerable amount of time before the benefit reaches across the broad population 2) While the rich people are spending more money which can only take place if they can maintain their wealth, the little guys are the ones paying heavy cost. ie. simultaneously while the Thain spent $800,000 to decorate his office, merrill lynch is laying off thousand of employees to offset their losses and cut expenses...see where I am getting at??
Someone has to produce all of those things that he's buying. So, people who have those jobs are getting business.
See Keynes, John Maynard. Look for something called "the paradox of thrift".
But, yeah, I would hardly call his expensive office re-model a move that was in the best interests of his comany. If I were a stock-holder, I'd be upset with what the textbooks call "a neglect of a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder wealth through the excessive consumption of perks."
Yeah, but a much better example would be all of the money that was spent on the inauguration, the balls, and other things connected with it. A simple private swearing in ceremony would have done the job just as well. In fact that's what ended up happening anyway, because of a mistake in the original ceremony.
No... why should it upset me? They're contributing thousands of dollars to the economy. People need to think with their heads, instead of sticking with the "if I can't have it, you shouldn't either!" mindset.
Edit: However, using the company's money to do this is a no-no.
i gotta admit i splurge and spend money i don't have =X
it may be his money, but he is an idiot for spending all that money on one rug WTF