She’s just a hardworking secretary
by digby
Carly Fiorina is very, very annoying:
“Crony capitalism is alive and well,” she told Beck. “When you have big, powerful, complicated, costly government, only the wealthy, the powerful, the big and the well-connected can handle it and all the rest of us are getting crushed. And people see that, they feel it in the bones. In their bones, people know if something is so complicated I don’t understand it, I’m getting screwed.”
I’ve got your crony capitalism right here:
Biggest Golden Parachutes
As outcry grows over executives who reap millions in severance bonuses in the face of their companies’ downfalls and bail-outs, TIME takes a look at other golden parachutes — and the people who opened them.
With Fiorina as chairman and CEO, Hewlett-Packard’s value declined significantly and the technology giant endured massive layoffs. Fiorina led a largely unsuccessful merger with Compaq in 2002, going against the wishes of company founder Walter Hewlett. Asked by the board of directors to step down in 2005, Fiorina left with $21 million in cash, plus stock and pension benefits worth another $19 million. According to HP executive compensation rules, departing executives are entitled to no more than 2.99 times their base salary; anything more requires stockholder approval. Fiorina’s parachute was more than that, so the stockholders filed a class action suit (a federal judge dismissed it in April 2008).
This is the woman who laid off 30,000 people by simply saying “the jobs should be done elsewhere” meaning overseas. She’s now reportedly worth 60 million or so. And she hasn’t had a job since she left HP. That’s because her money is working for her these days. Nice, isn’t it? And yet she’s saying “only the wealthy, the powerful, the big and the well-connected can handle it and all the rest of us are getting crushed.”
Not that anyone will care. She’ll could just lie and say she never said anything like that and that she has no money. Waddaya gonna do?
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