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All We Got Was Paint and Carpet

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Pioneer HQ has just undergone a facelift, but it appears we set our sights too low. Among the dirt thrown at departing Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain was that he spent $1.2 million sprucing up his office, including: $87,000 for an area rug in Thain’s conference room and another area rug for $44,000; a “mahogany pedestal table” for $25,000; a “19th Century Credenza” in Thain’s office for $68,000; a sofa for $15,000; four pairs of curtains for $28,000; a pair of guest chairs for $87,000; a “George IV Desk” for $18,000; six wall sconces for $2,700; six chairs in his private dining room for $37,000; a mirror in his private dining room for $5,000; a chandelier in the private dining […]

If you thought of them as customers, existing ones would be important

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The Turnpike cranked out one of the more inexplicable pieces of public policy last week — adding a $.50/month charge for FastLane transponders. For potential new users, this is a actually a passable deal — you can get a transponder for free (versus $25.95 one-time charge) with a payback of more than four years. For existing users, this is ridiculous — you paid a flat fee upfront and the Turnpike is changing the terms of the deal. I wonder if EZ-Pass Arbitrage will increase? This space is a huge booster of open road tolling, so its disappointing to see the Turnpike do this, unless its part of some brilliant political strategy whereby the Turnpike alienates as many political constituencies as […]

The Great, The Good and The Bad of the Gov's speech to local officials

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Today’s speech by the Governor before the Massachusetts Municipal Association was largely a very good one based on some very good plans. Kudos to the Governor. Let’s start with the Great, and, yes, there is also Bad. Great • The idea of requiring “each community to move all of your retirees to Medicare coverage and give you the option of extending your pension schedules within fiscally responsible parameters” is great. • The push to regionale “municipal services and other reforms around procurement and contract advertising” is great, but we have seen few details on the tools and incentives the state wants to provide. Pioneer’s own Steve Poftak was also at the MMA, presenting our recent study of obstacles and lessons […]

So you want European-style health care

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Atul Gawande has a great piece in this week’s New Yorker on the many varied ways to get to additional, and even universal coverage. Sidebar: Great, with the exception of his high praise for Paul “Ugh” Krugman, who he notes “received a Nobel Prize in Economics in part for showing that trade patterns and the geographic location of industrial production are also path-dependent.” Fact is, the insight that technology and trade patterns were “path-dependent” was well known to Piero Sraffa, neo-Marxian economist and author of The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Yes, I know such obscurities can only be explained by personal histories. Dark histories. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the man. To all accounts Piero was […]

Ken Lewis is on the clock

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Ken Lewis’ dramatic firing of John Thain from BofA only highlights the next departure — Ken Lewis. He bought Merrill at the height of the crisis and clearly fumbled the due diligence on the deal. Otherwise, why does he need $20b in funds and $120b in guarentees from the Feds to do the deal only a few short months later? A hidden winner in all this? Old Friend Brian Moynihan, who takes over for Thain.