by Doug DrenkowAfter reading about the dangers of righteous anger in the current economic crisis ...
Bracing for a Backlash Over Wall Street Bailouts
... I asked myself a few questions.
If the economy is to recover, do we need to put the banking and financial system on a new, sound footing? Absolutely. No economy can function without a functioning financial sector.
Since the taxpayers have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in AIG and other financial companies because they are "too big to fail" -- that is, they'd take the rest of us down with them -- doesn't that entitle the taxpayers to some say in how that money is spent? And entitle the taxpayers to some rewards, down the road, for covering the risks? Of course.
And if the companies couldn't survive without the taxpayers' assistance -- like the 80% share of AIG the U.S. Treasury has bought -- shouldn't the shots be called by the U.S. government, not executives giving themselves hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses for their "performance" (Lord, forgive us our ungodly thoughts)?
Whether you call it "nationalization" or "rationalization" or any other "zation" in the nation, we need to just do what we need to do and 1) not let ideology ("Never nationalize") trump common sense ("We the people are already paying the price, because nobody else could"), and 2) not cut off our nose to spite our face (Don't let our entire financial system collapse just to punish a limited number of individuals).
In the short term, stop the bleeding before it's too late (and enough already with these insane, obscene bonuses!). And in the long term, never again let so much money and power accumulate in so few hands, in any sector of our economy. We're all too important to fail.
4 comments:
Consider too that this comes on the heels of a government who for eight long years has reduced corporate taxes and tried their damnedest to eliminate estate and capital gains taxes altogether. Now these bailouts mean that tax rates for these gigantic companies have been effectively LESS than zero for some time.
I should think that a modicum of righteous anger is way overdue.
"HOPE has two children.
The first is ANGER
at the way things are.
The second is COURAGE
to DO SOMETHING about it."
-- St. Augustine --
The notion of taxpayers having any say in how money is spent is about as quaint as the Geneva Conventions of the United States Constitution, dont'cha know?
For what it's worth, they should have let all the banks collapse back in 07-08. The bankers deliberately blew up the bubble because they knew their political cronies (insert relevant country's 'left' and 'right parties here) would give the people the bill when it burst.
Let them fail, the market find it's own level and give these financial institutions a REAL stress test. If they can pay bonus' after a bailout (major mistake) let then stand on their own two feet. there are trillions in toxic loans still in the pipeline.
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