| Mar. 16th, 2009 @ 01:41 pm The idiots in charge |
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On Saturday I received two letters from Fidelity (where my former employer put my 401-K money). The first letter was to inform me of my change of address from my current address (with Street spelled out) to my same current address (with Street abbreviated). The second letter was sent to my "old" address (the one with Street spelled out) informing me that an address change letter had been sent to my new address.
I'm sure the idiots in charge think they are saving a ton of money by outsourcing all their software development to India. But they never take this kind of dumb-ass error into account when tallying their savings, just as my former employer's bean counters never take into account the quality of their product when they lay off top performers with years of experience in an incredibly arcane field and replace them with second-tier, recent grads (yes, they can't even get or keep the best Indian programmers for what they're willing to pay) with no background whatsoever in semiconductor testing.
In Fidelity's case, they are helping the rest of American companies to kill the golden goose. As long as there are lots of highly skilled (and paid) Americans contributing to 401-Ks, Fidelity is fat, dumb, and happy. Outsourcing to other countries destroys that, along with shrinking the tax base that supports all our wars, domestic programs, infrastructure projects, and social security. With fewer people contributing to retirement plans, there is less money propping up the stock market, less money available to lend for business expansion, and everything spirals down.
And another thing, while I'm on a rant ... Isn't it interesting that so many Republican politicians are calling for the government to just let GM and Chrysler go bankrupt so they can cancel their union contracts. But not one of them has suggested letting AIG go bankrupt to get out of the contracts that "require" them to give massive bonuses to their executives, even though they money is coming from the taxpayer-funded bailout. GRRRRR.
Little Bear has spoken. |