rationalizations

Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack Spent $368,675 on Private Jets Last Year

Did reading this fact in this morning’s New York Wall Street Journal Post make us nauseous, not just because of the callous and seemingly unending stupidity of the country’s biggest banking executives, but because of the amount of times our own personal annual income fits into that figure? Yes. Does it look bad? Yes. But, you know, we don’t have to care anymore. Anyway, if someone added up the amount of money we spent drinking stupid specialty cocktails and compared it to the amount we could have spent had we mixed them at home, that would look pretty bad, too, and we’d be embarrassed and ashamed. But also, were someone to present us with this figure and say, “This is how much you spent on booze, that’s DISGUSTING,” well, that would be kind of unfair, because they wouldn’t be taking into account the contribution we were making to the bottom lines of the bars, the bartenders, the cab fares, the overall market cap of LVMH, and the fact that it’s our money and we happen to think it’s much more fun to drink at a bar than at home. See, it’s all relative.

CEOs of Bailed-Out Banks Flew to Resorts on Firms’ Jets [WSJ]

Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack Spent $368,675 on Private Jets Last Year