CEO Spotlight: Charles Prince

Charles Prince was the CEO of Citigroup from 2003 to 2007. He got his Bachelor's, Master's, and Juris Doctor degrees from University of Southern California and went on to a achieve a Master of Law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. During the months leading up to the crash he was noted as being overtly positive and optimistic in his prognostications, according to Fortune magazine, evidently ignoring the evidence or not foreseeing the catastrophe that would unfold. When Prince resigned in November 2007 after Citigroup had suffered 3 consecutive major losing quarters, he left with $94 million in stock holdings and an accumulated $53 million salary from his 4 years as CEO. Citigroup were one of the worst culprits in subprime lending that played a major role in the economic crisis, yet they also received among the biggest taxpayer bailouts of any bank. Today Citigroup are profiting under new CEO Vikram Pandit.

Corporate Profile: Citigroup

Citigroup was one of the biggest recipients of the federal bailout. Stocks fell from about $55 per share pre-recession to $5 where they sit today. They receieved $341 billion in bailout from TARP. Profits from 1998-2008 exceeded a combined $145 billion, and the company netted $28 billion in 2010. Citigroup were one of the worst hands in subprime loaning, financing the 3 biggest subprime lenders, Countrywide, Ameriquest, and New Century Financial, and owning another, CitiFinancial. These 4 lenders accounted for over $280 billion in subprime loans from 2005-2007. My sense is they contributed a great deal to the current economic crisis.

Sweatshops and USA labor

The impact of sweatshops on labor in our country is heavy. There are less jobs in manufacturing and production sectors because these jobs are outsourced to third world nations where labor is cheap and abundant. There's certainly abundant labor here but companies would have to pay people more and they're not down for that because they're some greedy muthasuckaz, so they post up their factories in places where people will work for less than $1 USD an hour. The discrepancy in value of money between countries contributes greatly to this issue. There ought to be a standardization of value for trading goods. Workers in China have as much value as workers in America, they should be paid equally.

So few control so many

"Free trade" as we have defined and discussed together in class is a misnomer. If trade were truly free then we would not be having this discussion. The power vested in corporations by the WTO and by international trade agreements, including those reducing or eliminating import tariffs, has created a global economy in which the means of production and distribution of goods are controlled by increasingly fewer, more powerful entities. It is impossible to function in our society without contributing to this wave, because we are so integrated that we fundamentally rely on these few controlling groups to survive. Beyond commodities that may seem to us like essentials (all manner of electronics, modes of transportation, even clothing), the very food and drink we use to fuel our bodies are nearly all produced and distributed by a multinational corporation. It is not hard to see how this affects politics and quality of life, since the one who controls the stuff also controls the people who want/need the stuff (or have been programmed to think they need the stuff.) Unfortunately the situation looks pretty terminally fucked.

So what can we do? First, be a practical hand. Don't agonize over what brand of shoes or cereal or gasoline you buy, because unless you decide to go native and move to the mountains, you (and me) are at the very least monetarily contributing to the conglomeration of natural resources and helping the controlling factions get stronger. Feeling guilty is not productive, and neither is feeling powerless. Knowledge is power, so learn hella shitski!!! Hunter Thompson said politics is the art of controlling your environment. Politics as we understand it in our cultural idiom can be a broad, abstract thing to apprehend, so bring it down to its roots on an interpersonal level in order to better understand how things got the way they are and how we do our part to change it. Observe and be aware with all your senses. Give up the funk to receive the funk. And have fun.

Introduction/Response to consumer worksheet

Hi, my name is Addison and this is my first quarter at Foothill. I did 2 years at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles then decided to leave due to a lack of focus and direction. I've been living at home and working at a technology company for the past year and recently got the urge to go back to school to take some writing classes. I greatly enjoy reading and writing and am taking as many related classes as I can to practice and improve my skills. I don't have any set plans for my academic future though I'm leaning towards finishing out my remaining 2 years as a creative writing major. Excited to continue learning and sharing with you all.

In response to the consumer worksheet, I was surprised to find out that the wages of most sweatshop workers are higher than the average wage in their country. Our culture has, in an effort to distance ourselves from the fact that we utterly rely on their operation to support our mad consumerist lust, taught us negative associations with sweatshops; that the people work for nothing, are maltreated, live in squalid conditions, and while they are by no means living at what anyone would consider a decent standard, at least compared to their fellow country men and women sweatshop workers seem to be slightly better off. This in itself is appalling and illuminates just how dire the living circumstances are in most parts of the world. It is incredible to fathom the disparity between human beings in the range of our standards of living.