Let Them Eat Crow

Outrageous? That’s exactly what Chicago bank Northern Trust did, and the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd had plenty to say about it. First the facts:

The entertainment Web site TMZ broke the story Tuesday that Northern Trust of Chicago, which got $1.5 billion in bailout money and then laid off 450 workers, flew hundreds of clients and employees to Los Angeles last week and treated them to four days of posh hotel rooms, salmon and filet mignon dinners, music concerts, a PGA golf tournament at the Riviera Country Club with Mercedes shuttle rides and Tiffany swag bags.

Got that? A supposedly failing bank took $1.5 billion – billion! – in taxpayer money and then, ignoring growing public ire over the banking industry’s excesses, partied like Louis and Marie at Versailles with a soundtrack provided by some big name musicians.

Northern No Trust had a lavish dinner at the Ritz Carlton on Wednesday with a concert by Chicago (at a $100,000 fee); rented a private hangar at the Santa Monica Airport on Thursday for another big dinner with a gig by Earth, Wind & Fire; and closed down the House of Blues on Sunset Strip on Saturday (at a cost of $50,000) for a dinner and serenade by Sheryl Crow.

Okay, I’ll admit that to a musician a paying gig is a paying gig, especially in the current economy. And Chicago and Earth, Wind & Fire are hardly known for their political activist tendencies. But you have to hope Sheryl Crow would be savvy enough to steer clear of this kind of potential PR nightmare.

Dowd, who obviously expects better from the singer, points out the irony in someone like Crow performing for these fat cats.

In the ignoble tradition of rockers who sing for huge sums to sketchy people when we’re not looking, Crow – in her stint as a federal employee – warbled these lyrics to the oblivious revelers:
“Slow down, you’re gonna crash,
Baby, you’re a-screaming it’s a blast, blast, blast
Look out babe, you’ve go your blinders on…
But there’s a new cat in town
He’s got high payin’ friends
Thinks he’s gonna change history.”

And once TMZ lifted the rock on this little shindig and they were questioned about their outrageous behavior, did these dunderhead bankers apologize? No way.

In what is now an established idiotic ritual of rationalization, the bank put out a letter noting that it “did not seek the government’s investment” even though it took it, and that it had raised $3 million for the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce Charity Foundation and other nonprofits. They riposted that they have a contract to do it every year for five years; but this isn’t every year.

Oh, that’s okay then. As long as they raised some money for charity while they were having a good time at our expense. And the trip was apparently also educational because partiers were offered a seminar on the tightening of credit markets. So never mind.

I wonder, are these people insane or do they just not give a damn that some people are beginning to think it might be time to set up a guillotine or two? Dowd thinks it’s the latter.

Coming in a moment when skeptical and angry Americans watched A.I.G., Citigroup, General Motors and Chrysler – firms that had already been given a federal steroid injection – get back in line for more billions, the golf scandal was just one more sign that the bailed-out rich are different from you and me: their appetites are unquenchable and their culture is uneducable.

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who has been butting heads with execs like Merrill Lynch’s John Thain over shady bonuses, told Dowd the attitude of entitlement runs rampant.

[Cuomo] gets incensed about how ingrained, indoctrinated and insensitive the ex-masters of the universe are. “They think of themselves as kings and queens,” he said. And they’re not ready to abdicate.

The revolution will be streamed live on the Internet.

Read Dowd’s complete Times op-ed piece here and view all the sordid evidence, including highlights from Crow’s and Chicago’s gigs, here.