So after reading this article about John Thain’s resignation from BofA today, I did some quick Google work to see what info was out there regarding the Andrew Cuomo’s investigation into bonuses that Merrill Lynch paid to its executives just before its sale to Bank of America. While I didn’t find anything particularly interesting on that topic, I did find an article detailing the $1.22 million Thain spent redecorating his office in early 2008.

So from the Bloomberg article we have:

Merrill had hired Thain … in late 2007 with a $15 million signing bonus. Replacing E. Stanley O’Neal as Merrill’s CEO, Thain pledged to live up to his reputation as “Mr. Fixit,” the sobriquet he earned while rescuing the NYSE.

And:

“There was a certain surprise that the Merrill losses were as steep as they were,” said James Post, a professor of corporate governance and business ethics at Boston University School of Management…

That seems like a rather ridiculous statement when the C.E.O. Merrill brought in to be their saviour spent $131,000 on area rugs. It doesn’t take much common sense to realize that if your company has $40 billion dollars tied up in failing sub-prime bonds, that your first priority should not be redecorating you private dinning room.

Then again, he is a Republican.

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Update: The Bloomberg article has been edited to mention Thain’s spending $1.22 million. I think that makes the following quote, which was included in the original article and not changed in the update, rather amusing:

“On top of that, I think Lewis didn’t think Thain was doing as much as he could to control the expenses and minimize the losses.”

Ya think?

The following video made the front page of Digg today, so You’ve probably seen it. I just thought I’d comment quickly on how it perfectly encapsulates the problem with Republican thinking.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, Ann Coulter says that if she could be anyone in history, she would be F.D.R. so that she could prevent the New Deal. Al Franken, who is also at whatever event this was filmed at, responds that he would be Hitler, so he could prevent the Holocaust.

As is usual, the Republican has a ridiculously self-centered and biased view of the world, which, in this case, is that the worst thing that could possibly have happened in history is the New Deal, resulting in some small portion of her tax dollars going to feed someone without a job (gasp). On the other hand, you have a liberal thinker who immediately wishes he could prevent one of the greatest (if not the greatest) tragedies in human history.

In short, Ann Coulter is a stupid bitch, Al Franken is not.

I found a article on Fox news about the recent discovery that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is significantly larger then scientists had previously though. While I find this quite interesting I was disappointed by one small part of the article:

“Scientists mapped the Milky Way in a more detailed, three-dimensional way and found that it’s 15 percent larger in breadth. More important, it’s denser, with 50 percent more mass, which is like weight.” Emphasis mine.

Like weight? Really? Now I know this may be nit-picking and is a small distinction but as anyone who has taken a basic high school science class knows, mass and weight are not the same thing. I understand that they are similar, and the units of measurement have the same names, but there is a major difference.  The point of journalism is to educate the populace, not misinform them. All it would take is a few more words, to not only give an accurate description of this amazing discovery but, to potentially enlighten a few people as to the difference between mass and weight.

”… mass, which is the amount of material in an object.”

Four more words, that’s all it would take. And I doubt anyone who can’t understand that would be reading an article on this subject.

Or, maybe our galaxy just needs to hit the gym.