Speaking of Other Peoples Money: This is the FINAL WEEK of this subscription drive. It's going very, very well, but Mullings needs your support. Today. Click HERE.
On with the show:
The International Herald Tribune reported (and the Associated Press picked up) a story about six investment bankers who worked for Barclays Capital who had themselves a little dinner in London last summer.
What with appetizers, entrees, and wine and all, the dinner tab came to about $62,000. Something on the order of ten THOUSAND dollars a head which, according to the AP version, got them into the "Guinness World Records, [as] the most expensive meal per capita ever."
Five of the six have been fired by Barclays for what one banker said - without any apparent sense of irony - was "extravagant even by New York standards."
Maybe it was that first bottle of 1947 Chateau Petrus. I mean, you have one $18,000 bottle of wine and your judgment gets a little hazy, so you ask for the same wine, vintage 1945 and, when you find out it costs about $1,500 less than the 1947, you think you are just a half-step from eating at Wendy's.
I know that happens all the time here at caf� Mullings. "Hey, honey, screw off another cap of that red stuff," is an oft-repeated phrase here.
The IHP version, by Suzanne Kapner, quoted sources as saying investment banks are trying to cut down on expenditures "instituting what some complain are draconian measures, requiring employees to fly economy on business trips and limiting the amount spent on entertaining clients - sometimes to as little as $143 a person."
At the rate of "as little as" $143 per person, those bankers needed to have invited 427 and-a-half other people to have met the going limit.
One of Washington's most venerable expense account restaurants is the Palm. This also happens to be a Mullings fave and NOT just because my picture hangs on the wall, just inside the front door, look to your right, but I don't like to make a big deal about it.
According to the Palm, lobsters - their priciest meal - go for $21 per pound. If you get invited to dine at the Palm with a Barclays banker, be sure to ask for their 2,952 pound lobster special. Actually, even at the $143 per person PB&J level, you could get a nearly seven pound monster and still stay within the "draconian" limits.
Why am I making such a big deal about this? Because everyone who has ever worked for the Federal government or a major corporation understands the concept of "Other People's Money - OPM."
OPM is the money of hundreds of millions of taxpayers, or tens of thousands of stockholders. Unlike a sole proprietorship or a relatively small partnership, if it's OPM then (a) it isn't YOUR money, and (b) it isn't real money.
The Enron executives, I guarantee you, did not meet every morning at 8:30 in the executive dining room and gleefully rub their hands together as they cackled about how they were screwing the shareholders - many of whom happened to also be their employees. They were creating jobs and spending OPM.
Those six bankers, I guarantee you, knew they were being naughty, but also rationalized [I'm not certain, as a former PFC in the New Jersey and Ohio Army National Guard that any derivation of the word "ration" can be used in the same paragraph as a $62,000 dinner] their meal on the grounds that they make deals in the range of hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars and so their meal was well deserved.
The Congress of the United States is about to take up the appropriations bills which will fund the government - and all of the non-governmental organizations who sell goods and services to the government, get grants from the government, and are otherwise enriched by the government - starting next October.
It is important that we keep a close eye on the fine print in those appropriations bills - the pork, as it's called. With a budget which forecasts expenditures in excess of two TRILLION dollars, there may well be some very, very expensive dinners hidden in there by our elected representatives.
The people who draft those appropriations will likely fall into the same intellectual trap as the Barclays bankers and the Enron execs: It's not REAL money. It's Other People's Money.
If you are working at a lobbying firm, a government affairs office, a coalition, or a PAC you should take a
look at this page to see how advertising in Mullings might serve your organization very well:
� 
