This political cartoon refers to the firing of Merrill Lynch’s CEO Stan O’Neal, this past week. Despite having been let go, O’Neal, who was the highest-ranked African American in Wall Street, is still walking out with a humble $161 million.
The cartoon exposes the irony of the situation. O’Neal was fired six days after Merrill Lynch suffered a $2.2. billion quarterly loss— the worse ever since the bank’s founding. The cartoon depicts Merrill Lynch’s board as giving a harsh treatment to O’Neal: they scream “And stay out!” while kicking the former CEO’s butt. By making it so, the cartoon is criticizing the bank for not realizing that O’Neal is in fact in a very good position. He has been let go, indeed, but with a prize no smaller than 160 million dollars to be added to his (already quite consecrated) fortune. Also, since much of this prize is in stocks in Merrill Lynch, if the next chief executive brings better tides to the bank, he will add even more millions to his fortune (as was the case with former CEO of Walt Disney Co.). No, I do not think Stan O’ Neal is getting too harsh a treatment...I certainly would not mind being in his shoes.
The cartoon also makes a more general point: it is a common trend for these multi billion Wall street companies to “punish” their CEOs by letting them go when the bank suffers a great loss. But truth be said, these CEOs will still be doing incredibly well, and are perhaps treated too nicely once they are fired. The people who actually get hurt are all the other hundreds of employees who also get fired, but who do not happen to walk out with a few million in their pockets.
The cartoon’s purpose is to entertain and to humor, but also to express the “public’s” perspective on the whole ordeal. The cartoon shows the common American’s view on the whole situation. For a start, it is a rather absurd amount of money we are dealing with. At least for me, the thought of any individual single-handedly receiving more than one hundred million dollars is just absurd in itself! And the fact that receiving such a large quantity of money is being perceived by Merrill Lynch as a punishment is even more startling. In fact, it is almost offensive to everyone else out there who survives with much less.
Ultimately, I think Daryl Cagle, the author of this cartoon, does a good job in taking a humorous look at the situation, pointing out its absurdity—an absurdity which we have grown immune to. The cartoon urges us take a step back and reconsider the whole scenario.
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