But that's NOT what I was objecting to was it?
Michael said:
The total the cost of annual compensation, including benefits and the value of stock options is certainly NOT the same as YEAR END BONUSES.
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But that's NOT what I was objecting to was it?
The total the cost of annual compensation, including benefits and the value of stock options is certainly NOT the same as YEAR END BONUSES.
You missed the little detail of annual pay for all employees. Yeah, that is totally different. :bugeye:
Hey guys, I have a whole lot of hairs I need split in a hurry. I can pay you $10 salary, or $5 in salary and then another $5 bonus when you finish the work. Which would you prefer, and why?
You think it's splitting hairs to claim that year's worth of salary,benefits,stock options and bonuses can be called a YEAR END BONUS?
BS
Anyone reading that claim would naturally assume when referred to as a Year End Bonus that that would be in ADDITION to a years salary and benefits.
If you think salaries for the entire company is splitting hairs, then you may need to change shampoos. 'Cuz the one you're using has washed your brain clean of all intelligence.
I think it's splitting hairs to suggest that the question of whether the massive compensation is accounted as "salary" or "bonus" or "benefits" makes any difference to Michael's point - which is that these guys get compensated generously for activities of questionable (or even, demonstrably negative) value to the country.
And any honorable person with half a brain would easily see that this distinction is irrelevant to Michaels' point.
Which is why you are pursuing it. You have no response to the troubling fact that GS employees get paid really well on the one hand, but have a reputation as sleazy and destructive on the other, and so you are casting about for some irrelevancy to derail into. This being a standard sleazebag tactic of yours.
gmilam said:
If you're too much of a fool and/or troll to notice the point - that exactly how you account this stuff is irrelevant to the basic point - then you should refrain from responding to me.
No, his point was this amount was their Year End Bonuses.
And I think you are lying when you state the amount of YEAR END BONUSES but you are actually talking about the full year compensation package.
Before we can even discuss if it is too much or not, we have to at least agree that this amount was in fact their total compensation.
Hey, whatever makes you feel like you're winning, I guess.
Reasonable people can read his post and see exactly what you're up to. Which is to cherry-pick a single sentence, and then harp away at an inconsequential miswording in there for several pages. The idea being to bury ideas that you dislike, but don't have any real counter to, under a pile of your own ego masturbation.
This kind of thing being why you have such a poor reputation around here.
Who cares what you think?
It's pretty obvious that your whole purpose here is exactly to prevent any such discussion, so I'd have to be a fool to engage with such a transparent ploy as the above.
Instead, I'll just stick to the point: Goldman Sachs employees get paid extremely well for doing things that would seem to be destructive, immoral, and borderline illegal.
Here is what I said, mentioning 2008, and not limited to China:
{And they have been for about a decade.}
Brazil even bought some Italian bonds a few years ago to reduce the fraction of dollars in its reserves - talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire!
Summary, as re read of post 1194 in full shows, I was not speaking of any brief period but of the long term trend in "most every country of importance" and even predicting some future developments related to China backing it bonds with gold. My post was defintitely NOT fixed on only current conditions. So when you replied with data from the rare quarter in which the Chinese (only, I think) did slightly do the opposite of what I said, that is a "chery picking" effort to show I was wrong about most countires trying to reduce their holding of US dollars in reserves. Now, for last 10 years, and for at least five more (if dollar has not collapsed first.)
If you call getting to the truth winning, then yeah, maybe I am very slowly winning. Other then that, there is nothing really to win.
No, a forum like this is an ongoing process.
Resolving errors of fact when they come up is part of that process.
And to claim that the total annual compensation and benefits they received was really their year end bonuses is a lie and not helping in the discussion.
I'm sure I do among those who would lie to make their case.
Who cares what you think?
It's what you can prove that matters.
In this case I proved my point.
You're just going on with your sour grapes.
That's ridiculous, I'm not preventing any discussion, but you seem to be trying to sidetrack the discussion, as opposed to simply admitting that the amount quoted was the total yearly compensation and not just year end bonuses, and then moving on.
And now, after all this BS, you finally get back to the subject.
I'll agree with the former but you have provided no proof that the average Goldman Sachs employee is destructive, immoral or participates in illegal activities.
Somehow I doubt you will.
As to Michael's points about GS, you will notice that he makes totally unsubstantiated claims.
Which makes disputing them a pain.
I've shown so many are wrong I generally don't bother any more since I doubt many people pay any credence to his posts.
But if you want to substantiate any of them, go for it.
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Hey, whatever makes you feel better.
As long as we're both agreed that your assertion does not apply to the present day, and that the current activity in the Forex holdings is exactly in the opposite direction to what you describe. And so that it is incorrect on its face for you to make statements phrased in the present tense, which directly contradict the actual situation in the present. If you want to make statements that are explicitly about long-term trends, and include disclaimers that certain periods - including the present - do not behave that way, then I won't complain.
The data I gave you showed that dollars are increasing as a share of the total world Forex holdings. And that this has been going on since last year.
This charge assumes that the current data is an anomaly, and that the trend will reverse again soon. But that is entirely speculative - for all you know, the trend is now heading the other way.
Moreover, your claim is phrased in a way that is at least misleading, if not outright incorrect: over the past 10 years, there have been only a handful of quarters (all right after the recession hit in 2008) where there has been anything other than growth in the amount of dollars held in Forex reserves. The "reduction" trend you speak of is relative - dollars declining as a percentage of total Forex reserves. The trend in the absolute number of dollars out there held in foreign exchange reserves has been clearly positive for the past 10 years, and uniformly positive for the past 4. Forex reserves have grown more quickly than any reductions in the dollar's role, and so the net effect has been demand for more dollars to go into Forex reserves.
And as far as ten-year trends in Forex holdings go, you're avoiding the elephant in the room: the Euro. Ten years ago is when the Euro went primetime. Over the subsequent years, many countries shifted Forex reserves away from the dollar and into the Euro. Now that the EU is in the toilet, and looks set to stay that way for some time, people are shifting Forex reserves away from the Euro and into... the dollar. So unless you're predicting some quick rebound of confidence in the EU, I see no reason to think that the old trend will re-assert itself.
And derailing into inconsequential accounting distinctions is a tactic used to prevent that process from illuminating areas you'd rather remain unexamined.
It's a simple mistake that doesn't affect anything material to anyone's points, and your calculated tactic of focussing on it, exaggerating its importance, and issuing trumped-up accusations of deception on that basis, is just so much of the usual dishonorable tactics on your part. Nothing you are doing here can be credibly described as "helping in the discussion."
Let's also note that your initial response to Michael's post was itself pure bullshit: the claim that Goldman couldn't have paid whatever bonuses, because their profits were less than that. It was only once I pointed out that you don't seem to understand how profit is accounted in relation to payroll costs, and provided you with links describing the exact numbers, that you siezed onto this irrelevant detail in some silly attempt to draw attention away from your silly error and re-assert some kind of intellectual supremacy. So, please, spare us the pretense of being some kind of diligent fact-checker. It's not going to fool anyone.
I attempted exactly that a few posts back, when I noted that you guys are splitting hairs. The response was for you to spend your whole afternoon trying to inflate this irrelevancy into a central issue. So, yeah, consider developing some modicum of shame, if not actual honor.
This from the guy that's spent so much time and energy trying to avoid said subject.
Again, who do you think you're fooling? Yourself?
I'll leave it to Michael to prove his own points, and meanwhile note that no such proof seems to be required. Goldman Sachs already has a lousy enough reputation. If that doesn't convince you - a well-known shill - well, so what? The whole demand that people submit to the bar of having to prove their assertions to your satisfaction is just so much of a mug's game. You are not a reasonable, unbiased evaluator, and so nobody is under any obligation to prove anything to your satisfaction before asserting it as fact.
Michael is a problematic poster who engages in a considerable amount of sloppy behaviors.
Actually that makes it very easy. You simply find some sources that say the opposite, and provide them. The only time it's difficult to dispute unsubstantiated claims, is when they are accurate.
It's a much bigger pain to dispute substantiated claims, because you have to deal with said substance.
Whatever his flaws, he actually has more credibility than you do. Sure he's sloppy and has an agenda - but he doesn't behave like an immature bully, nor cling petulantly to clearly-false assertions, nor engage in any of the myriad low tactics that you routinely employ to undermine the discourse here.
And anyway, we reached this particular juncture because you saw fit to challenge a superficially-incorrect statement of his with your bit of idiocy about bonuses being a component of profits (and not, let's note, anything about the distinction between bonuses and salary or other benefits). So you have no standing to claim disinterest or superiority, here. You went after him, and made egregious errors of fact in doing so. And now you've spent several posts trying to threadshit your way out of that. This being a routine behavior for you, and that explaining why you have been reduced into a chew-toy around here.
He can, again, substantiate his own claims as he sees fit. I'll content myself with batting you down when you post inanities, addressed to Michael or otherwise.
Except it is not an inconsequential distinction.
It was a simple mistake, and then you repeated it.
This. . . . this just boggles the mind, truly. Conservative states want less government, yet they get the most from the federal government. . ?
Yet the blue states, they are paying more than their fair share, yet?
:shrug:
Tell me the corporate media doesn't have the country under it's spell.
Yes We agree, and I told why dollar is currently gaining fraction of reserves:
I made more detailed reply to rest of your post but it got lost, I think becuase I am not using normally used computer and got logged out.
Here is essence:
I speak of relative VALUE (not just dollars) held by central banks. Two long term trends are acting to make that dollar value decline (dollars dropping purchasing power and central banks resuming "getting out of dollars")
I have darker view of dollar´s future value than you, so this will, it true, make percent of reserves fall even if number of dollars is greatly increased even compared to number of Euros.
I expect the "Northern Euro" to be strong and the "Club Med" countries will not use it. This Euro plus the SDR (with appreaciating RMB part of the mix, within a year) will be a growing fraction of of VALUE in reserves. Also in 3 or 4 years China´s gold backed (for central banks only) RMB bonds will be the preferred reserve currency.
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Seems Dr Paul knew about what was in those racist newsletters.
Big surprise.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...-sources-say/2012/01/20/gIQAvblFVQ_story.html
Big surprise.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...-sources-say/2012/01/20/gIQAvblFVQ_story.html
Ron Paul isn't going to do that! Ron Paul believes in deregulation and a small (weak) government that corporations can run over whenever they wish.
Sure it is. Goldman Sachs employees get paid very well, and do things that are destructive to the rest of us. What difference does it make whether their pay is accounted as "salary" or "bonus" or whatever else?
Do you have anything whatsoever to back up your naked assertion that this distinction matters? Because you've dedicated considerable time, space and energy to attacking this minor accounting question here, without offering any suggestion of what difference it would make to anyone's point.
Looks to me like you don't have any material response to the point, and are embarassed that I caught you out in such a stupid, basic error (bonuses coming out of profits) that you are now trying to sieze onto the nearest irrelevancy to derail the whole thing.
So what? You have yet to even argue that this minor quibble makes any difference to anything. This is just your usual tactic of cooking up inane details in a silly attempt to bolster your image. All of which is just pathetically insecure.