Piece in the NYTimes on the people handling the bankruptcies in the financial sector, particularly Lehman Brothers. Apparently the time of associates in law firms (the worker bees familiar from John Grisham's novels who are 1, or 2, or 3 years removed from law school) can be billed at $500 an hour. If they worked 2,000 hours in a year, that's a cool mill. And associates, if Grisham is right, are expected to bill 60 or 70 hours a week.
Remember that when right wingers talk about government bureaucrats being paid more than private--I double damn guarantee no Federal lawyer is in the same ballpark as these people.
The piece offers some justifications for the charges, and there is some oversight. But my bottom line is: pigs at the trough, making hay while the sun shines (to mix farm metaphors). The creditors of the bankrupt institution don't have the ability effectively to monitor the firms and serve as a countervailing interest to abuses.
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