Thought I wasn't gonna make it today, didn't you? Well, cocktail in hand (because it's Friday) I am here to bring forth another deadly sin. P.S. I might get saucy on account of the vodka.Greed - A desire for material wealth so strong that it gets in the way of spiritual growth; a desire for more than one needs or deserves.
Punishment in Hell: taking a swim in cauldrons of boiling oil, which is A-OK with me.
Greed is really one of the more horrible sins. I mean, not only is it about not sharing, which is totally uncool, but it's about hoarding stuff that you may never use. As previously mentioned, UNCOOL.
I encounter greed all the time, and greedy people are hard not to notice, but I try really hard not to be greedy myself. I actually have the opposite problem most of the time, I usually feel like I don't deserve stuff. M is trying to break me of that, because it really upsets your mojo at the roulette wheel or the slots. I mean, you have to believe! You can't put Debbie-Downer energy out there before you set your chips down or you're sunk. Am I right?
"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." - Gordon Gekko, Wall Street, 1987
Capitalism depends on greedy fuckers like this, or at least unrestrained capitalism does. Today, we all benefit from these greedy fuckers. We get cheap clothes and shoes, affordable heirloom tomatoes, and clean hotel rooms. The kinds of labor involved in the service, farming, and outsourced factory work that fuels our economy is all about corporate greed. If corporations really believed in their Workers Rights documents (they've all got 'em), they would have the same ethical standard no matter who is working for them or where they work. We are the most "unequal nation in the developed world," according to Too Much Online, a web-zine that put out a top 10 list of America's Greediest a few months ago. They are as follows:
10. Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Airlines
Despite a loss of profits, Delta seems to continually reward Anderson with raises, shares, and a bunch of perks while they lower seating capacity on planes, raise prices for tickets, and charge up to $30 for you to check a bag! Meanwhile, it's not even Anderson's only gig. He's a director of a medical technology board that awards him $188k a year.
9. George David & Marie Douglas-David
George is CEO of a company involved in defense contracting, which has had just the peachiest time since 9/11, earning him the top perch on the list of best paid defense technology executives. He and his wife just went through a messy divorce, in which she asked for more than their pre-nup designated in alimony. She aruged that to cover her "basic expenses" she would need not the $20,000 a week agreed upon, but $53,000 a week. "Among those basics: “$4,500 a week for clothes, $8,000 for travel, and $1,500 for eating out.” A WEEK! And what does she even eat? She's approx. 98 lbs!
8. Steve Wynn
A Las Vegas pioneer, Steve Wynn has enough money that he can put an elbow right through a Picasso and be like all, "bummer," and go on with his day. True story. He's in the top 200 of Forbes top 500 richest people. He's ridiculously rich in a town full of excess. Despite his $900 million fortune, Wynn gave out the requisite demotions and job cuts in February of last year, saving his company $80 million. But "in November Wynn Resorts announced a special $4-per-share dividend. Total cost of the dividend payout to Wynn Resorts: $492 million. Total dividend check that will go to Steve Wynn: $88 million." Nice.
7. Robert Rubin, US Treasury-Secretary, Citigroup senior strategist
This guy had a big hand in the economic downturn during hist stint as Treasury Secretary by helping roll back New Deal reforms that prevented some of the greedy bullshit that went on during the Bush2 administration, and as Citigroup's senior strategist, he managed to be around for their disgraceful $65 billion loss. He managed to rake in $126 million plus perks from his tenure there.
6. Andrew Hall
I'm not even gonna shorten the Too Much review of Hall, you should know all of this:
"If you happen to be Andrew Hall, the world’s most celebrated commodity trader, you don’t care what other people think. Hall waged a four-year battle — against his neighbors in the posh Connecticut town of Southport — to keep a 80-foot-long concrete sculpture on his lawn.
The neighbors won, and Hall had to remove the concrete eyesore. He promptly replaced it with two garishly painted "cartoon-like” sculptures of cars.
Hall can afford plenty of sculptures. He took home $100 million betting on oil futures and other commodities in 2008 — after picking up a quarter-billion over the previous five years — and stood to receive another $100 million this year.
But his employer, Citigroup, balked. Citi, by that time, was sitting on $45 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars, and handing $100 million to Hall, the honcho of Citi’s commodity-trading subsidiary, would have created a PR disaster for the bank — and the Obama administration as well.
Hall didn’t care. He demanded his trading fee. Citi ended up having to sell off Hall’s subsidiary, at a bargain basement price, to end the Hall headache.
Our story, to be sure, does have a happy ending — for Hall, Citi, and federal pay czar Kenneth Feinberg. Hall will get his $100 million, but not until next year. That deferral let Citi claim a zero pay expense for Hall in 2009, and Citi’s pay outlays for the year now show up about $100 million less than last year.
This accounting razzmatazz helped skew the 2009 executive pay totals for the seven biggest bailout basket cases and enabled pay czar Feinberg to claim that pressure from his office had, “on average” reduced executive cash comp at the seven by an impressive — and thoroughly misleading — 90 percent."
5. John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, the internet network company
4. Rupert Murdoch, media mogul, owner of Fox
Rupert isn't American, so I don't know why he's on this list, but he's for sure a greedy mofo. He's one of those people that makes so much money that they don't really exist in the real world. They exist in this fake ether-world of the super-rich, where shit just doesn't matter. Seriously, your tears? They mean nothing. I mean, if you can channel them into a box-office smash and promote the shit out of your tears to the extent you are contractually obligated to, well, cry away, but otherwise, WTF? We're trying to eat our $1000 chocolate mousse with real gold flakes. Stop with the noise.
Despite his gajillions of dollars, he wants to charge you, yes YOU for reading news on the internet. NEWS. On the Internet. Place of all things free. I'm telling you, he doesn't really live here with the rest of us.
3. Mark Herd, CEO of Hewlett-Packard
Ever wonder why printer ink costs so damn much money? I mean, the printer itself costs about the price of like 3 printer cartridges. How is that effing possible? Well, thank Mark Herd, who is milking cartridges that cost $3 to make. He cut 6,000 workers last year and gave people demotions (some up to 15%, which makes me, a lowly adjunct at a Cal State feel bad for them, because I'm only at 10% cut.), Raising his douche quotient even more? He took a pay cut of 20% in "solidarity" but made that tidy sum up in new stock awards.
2. Richard Scott, Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. CEO
A quote from Scott,
“Do we have an obligation to provide health care for everybody? Where do we draw the line? Is any fast-food restaurant obligated to feed everyone who shows up?”
Just fuck this guy, is all I have to say.
But Too Much has more:
"The federal government went on to indict key Columbia/HCA personnel for “bilking Medicare while simultaneously handing over kickbacks and perks to physicians who steered patients to its hospitals.” The company ended up pleading guilty to 14 felonies and paying $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines.
The board of Columbia/HCA, then the nation’s biggest for-profit hospital chain, would go on to ease Scott out the door, but ever so gently. He left with a $10 million severance package and stock worth $300 million.
See, fuck this guy.
1. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle business software
He apparently buys up companies, fires everyone and then gobbles up their customers. After laying off tons of people, he buys yachts and sales them in rich guy yacht races. He also ranks as a total jerk because he pledged $115 million to Harvard but then didn't pay because it was all based on Harvard president Lawrence Summers. Not that Harvard needed the money, but still. It's shady.
Summers, as a side note, is famous for his feud with Cornell West, who totally rules, and for giving a rousing speech at a conference about how women don't make it in academia in the sciences not due to discrimination, but due to biology. He claims that socialization or cultural reasons are negligible. Dude! Really? Not surprisingly, 88% of tenured faculty during his presidency were men. This is the kind of loyalty Ellison has, to dudes who suck at an exponential level. Looks like my chances at Harvard have just been tossed out the window....
There's actually a joke about Ellison:
“What’s the difference between God and Larry Ellison? Answer: God doesn’t think he’s Larry Ellison.”
He supports the push for mandatory national ID cards, has had his fair share of insider trading lawsuits that he's wiggled out of, and manages to donate only 1% of his staggering income each year to charity. A winner! #1
Vampires aren't particularly associated with greed, but as greed and vampires both become important cultural narrative themes, they are bound to intersect. The painting above that shows greed via George W. Bush and our Lady Liberty was painted by comic artist Alex Ross and rules!
I have yet to see Daybreakers, but I hear it has its share of corporate America greed symbolism. When I see it, I'll be sure to publish an in-depth review.
Sure, vampires are greedy for blood, and if I remember in Blade III/Blade Trinity, there was a plan by the baddie to use the homeless as blood farms, which is super greedy, but overwhelmingly, the other sins seem to come forward in vampire lore. The only time they overlap is when the vampire has an aristocratic legacy and feels he or she deserves more, or there is a clear element of hierarchy in vampire culture which is a result of old vampires hanging on to outdated traditons. The Sookie Stackhouse books and True Blood explore the vampire kings and queens, all of whom do the same stuff the super-rich and royal do, namely exploit, dabble in narcissism, and give less than two shits about anyone else.
Anyone want to add to my greedy jerks list? Do so in the comments!
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