The first story this morning is about Warren Spector, who was fired from Bear Stearns (BSC) last summer in the first inkling of where we all were headed. As CNN Money reports this morning:
The former Bear Stearns co-president was one of the first heads to roll in the credit crisis when he was ousted last August. But being fired could have saved Spector’s fortune. As part of his resignation (a move suggested by then-boss Jimmy Cayne), Spector was forced to vest most of his stock options and restricted stock by December 28, 2007, when the shares closed at $87.35. That amounted to a little more than a million shares, according to the bank’s 2007 proxy statement, which would have been worth about $91.1 million.
Warren Spector gets fired. Ends up with $91 million. Even after taxes you’d have to say that was a nice payday.
Story #2: This morning the cafeteria workers who labor in the neighborhood lunchrooms are demonstrating outside a local building. Their employer has been resisting their demands for higher wages and benefits for quite some time, and they’ve taken their noisy, raucous drumbeat to a number of different locations recently. I walked by them just now. They don’t have a very good flyer. None of the issues are recounted in it. Just a large message in red: FOR OUR FAMILIES.
The corporations whose lunchrooms are served by this Union rear high above the street around here, each home to any number of guys who will get more when they are fired than the entire group now out on the street will earn in six lifetimes.
Of course, everybody suffers in a tough economy. Spector, for instance, was probably forced to leave a lot of long-term compensation on the table. I’m sure that rankles him in the dim hours before morning, when he thinks about what he might need to do in the future. For his family, you know.