5,000 a week pension !!

th3 s1aught3r

bladespin wrote: »

Problem here is no-one questioned where the money was going until now, .

Exactly. They were able to name their own salaries it seems

bladespin

th3 s1aught3r wrote: »

Exactly. They were able to name their own salaries it seems

Absolutely and worse again most went into very important roles, they may not have seemed so at the time but we all know now how much damage they were able to do, a certain financial regulator springs to mind. The danger now is creating a witch hunt that will put the genuinely talented off taking up public jobs

AskMyChocolate

skyhighflyer wrote: »

The NTMA do an excellent job and this man deserves his pension. Despite FF's ineptitude, they managed to keep us afloat this year by taking the opportunity to issue bonds when market conditions were favourable.

They also front-loaded our finances in the beginning of the year, which meant we were able to take a break from the market when yields shot up to ~6% this year. If they hadn't, we'd quite possibly be bankrupt right now.

Do you know anything of the NTMA and its work or are you just annoyed that a professional who did excellent work in service of the State is well paid?

I totally agree, and as a militant socialist, this may seem odd. He did an excellent job as head of the NTMA given the mission statement he was given. I find his remuneration excessive and his lack of will to take on the might of Leinster House infuriating, but he was not there to set policy. He's no Eugene Mc Erleane, (who should now be financial regulator) but he at least made it perfectly clear that he'd have nothing to do with NAMA or the pissing away of the small national pension fund that he tried to build in the face of the "skimming" of the national resources by McCreevy and Aherne and their sleveen mates.

Amhran Nua

Wertz wrote: »

but WTF is going on when people getting 500K a year weren't even having it decided by some transparent and publically accesible process?

The civil service needs significant top down reform, simply put.

Celly Smunt

right thats it,i'm going to get up and protest next monday :rolleyes:

Precious flower

It's a joke sure Brian Cowen gets paid more than Barack Obama!? I mean come on!!:mad: I have a hard time believing how that has not been addressed. If they're so happy to cut our wages than theirs should be severely reduced.

Celly Smunt

Precious flower wrote: »

It's a joke sure Brian Cowen gets paid more than Barack Obama!? I mean come on!!:mad: I have a hard time believing how that has not been addressed. If they're so happy to cut our wages than theirs should be severely reduced.

but what does Barack Obama have to pay for?

AskMyChocolate

De Dannan wrote: »

This is the same tripe we are being fed constantly by politicians and people who are benefiting from these huge inequalities
who is paying these salaries and pensions anyway ????
This man was paid a HUGE salary and is now entitled to 5k a week. Im sick of the constant 'hes entitled to it you know' ****e. NO ONE is entitled to 5,000 a week pension, paid by the state I dont care who they are
It is obvious that we are NEVER going to get out of this economic hole with the current political system, where people actually seem to name their own salaries and politicians can vote for pay increases, hmmm

These politicians, civil servents and bankers sit there laughing at the rest of us and our inability to change the system.
We have an ex leader who once addressed both house of US government and who tells us he brought peace, now sits in a cupboard for a tabloid rag, bankers who leg it to the US to hide from the law, NTMA boss who did such a great job even though we are in an economic mess
please :rolleyes:

I agree wholeheartedly with your post but I don't think it is fair to lump Michael Somers in with the self-serving filth that you have so eloquently encapsulated above. He was employed to manage the National Treasury and when the world went bang, we were invested in good stocks and bonds, good futures and had a good supply of cash on hand. We were basically in the same boat as Warren Buffet.We'd taken a hit but there were others weaker. Somers actually did slightly better. The difference is, that Warren Buffet used this financial prudence to make an absolute packet (in real wealth terms) rather than blow the entire lot in an effort to keep his lazy, incompetent, paymasters and their privileged cohorts out of jail.

Is Michael Somers entitled to his pension ? I would have to say no. He can't have it both ways. Had he come out publicly and stated that the banks shouldn't be rescued under any circumstances unless their German creditors were willing to pay all administration fees, he was not acting in the interests of the NTMA and had he been with Goldman Sachs he would have made a fortune. Instead he became a pawn of Leinster House privilege.

If he was in the private sector he would have advised the government to put all the banks into administration, get rid of all the top brass, buy them for €1 each and charge their creditors a healthy administration fee for trying to sort out the mess.

Basically, behave like a developer, dealing with NAMA.

If we have to pay through the nose for a complete lack of values, we should at least get our money's worth No?

AskMyChocolate

Wertz wrote: »

The one thing I don't understand about cases like this (and it's certainly not ioslated) is why if these guys are on such huge salaries that they aren't in private pension schemes...I mean if the State pays that level of wage to an employee over a course of a 20+ yr career, why can't they pay into a private pension and reap the tax breaks that that allows for....no, instead they are paid the huge salary and the defined benefit pension both from state coffers as coughed up by Joe Taxpayer.
Also, don't these guys have savings and share/property portfolios to live off?

For people making the point that docking a euro from each of the 450K plus dole recipients does more to reduce expenditure than slashing Somer's pension, that's fine...but such high levels of remuneration are seen as overly lavish when placed alongside the cuts being proposed.

This man might have been worth both the salary and the pension...how many out there including many of your current and ex TDs aren't? How many others in the civl service waltz off into the dusk with a small fortune leaving the bill with the rest of us?
Such imbalances serve only to diminish the trust of the general population in the system that is supposed to serve them but seemingly only serves itself and it's closed circle of cohorts.

Superb post chief. There's more to justice than sums. And justice is far more important to the have-nots than it is to the haves, despite the muddling of law and order and justice.

AskMyChocolate

the purple tin wrote: »

Barack Obama only makes about 20,000 euro more than that per year :eek:
Just who does comes up with these massive salaries and pensions?
Did this NTMA bloke originally get offered a 5,000 a week pension or did he have to haggle it up to that figure before he signed his contract?

The Board of Directors of Goldman Sachs, who are elected on a proxy vote by the board of directors of AIG, who are elected by the board of Credit suisse, who are elected by the board of Goldman Sachs.... and woops there goes your forty years of contribution to society (and your grandkids next forty, just to sweeten the deal), see'ya in the Sandy Lane Beach Hotel.

I'll be the one standing at the bar with a red carnation sipping a martini.:cool:

Oh FFS I'm the one with the grenade.:mad:

AskMyChocolate

randylonghorn wrote: »

So because, as a result of the hubris and ineptitude of our political and economic leaders, the numbers of unemployed claiming social welfare has shot up, as therefore has the overall bill, the solution is to cut social welfare and continue to pay huge salaries and pensions to those self-same political and economic leaders, simply because the overall bill for that will be smaller than the SW bill?

How does that constitute either logic or justice?!

There will probably have to be cuts in SW, but that will be a lot more acceptable to the ordinary people of this country if they see their "leaders" actually leading, and taking a sharp axe to those inflated salaries and pensions.


In fairness, Michael Somers has shown himself to be a pretty capable guy, and one capable of independent thought and of actually articulating it publicly even when it was unpopular with the politicos, and there is no reason why he shouldn't be entitled to retire on a decent pension and live comfortably.

He doesn't need €5,000 a week though, nor anything like it.

"Permission to say "Bravo" sir?

"Permission granted"

Bravo!

therecklessone

Rar rar rabble rabble...