Thursday, February 12, 2009

Thems the banks...


Rant #2 for the week. SRY.

Read this first: Associated Bank plans its own fiesta after bailout party.

That's right, Wisconsin's own Associated Bank has joined the list of bailout offenders to use federal aid to send 100 employees on a vacation TO A RESORT IN PUERTO RICO.

WTF.

President and CEO of Associated Bank, Paul Beidemann justified not canceling the trip by saying these "top performers" deserved to go, namely because the bank still pulled a profit last quarter.

Wait a tick; I thought I read you received $525 million from the federal government. That's millions of dollars of taxpayers money, being spent for bank employees to spend more than a week drinking watered-down daiquiris and getting sunburnt.

I'm not saying that employees shouldn't be rewarded for a job well done; but there's a time and a place. Give them a weekend getaway to a waterpark in GB, or a $100 gift certificate to Best Buy.

As a preferred stock holder and past employee of the company, I'm a little sore. As far as I'm concerned, the bank has two options:

#1. Take me on a vacation to Puerto Rico too. Or,
#2. Let me sell my stock for the price I initially paid, so I can stop supporting such an inept business.

4 comments:

Gregor said...

Sheesh, when you read that article the CEO really comes off as a fartknocker. Me thinks you could have easily taken your salary and paid for the trip yourself, fella. You'd probably be getting nation-wide good press instead of local bad press.

Dr. Bergeron said...

lovin the picture

Veasy said...

And here they charge me $1.50 every month when I withdraw money more than 3 times. Then last month give me another $3.50 unidentified charge?! It was probably to pay for one of their Pina Coladas. Lucky turds.

Gregor said...

Looks like you win in the end, Ric.
Yay!