Okay, now send me your grandchildren
By Jack E. Lohman
We might just as well, they are going to be paying this bill for decades to come.
We call this the free market, or more accurately, “whatever you can get away with.” Cheat where you can, hope you get away with it, and get out before it crumbles. Or if you get caught, hope that your favored politicians look after you.
The greedy CEOs took it out, the taxpayers will repay it, and the CEOs get to keep the booty.
It’s a matter of scale. Start a company and take a massive salary. If you get rich, it comes either from overpriced product or underserved customers. Somebody has to lose if someone’s going to win.
Normally the market forces will correct for these little transactions. A competitor will intervene and people will stop buying the overpriced product or service. Here only the bad guys get hurt.
Today’s crisis impacts even the innocent guys – their families and friends – with the CEO and executive perpetrators well protectected by political friends.
Yeah, with the free market system you may be on the receiving end some day, if you’re not already. And there’s nothing wrong with that, to an extent. That you could be taking assets from someone less fortunate is, well, their tough luck. They should have been more aggressive. Smarter. It’s a race, don’cha know? Dog eat dog.
But it’s not a happy race. While I like our capitalistic, free-market system, I’d like a more regulated market. With oversight earlier rather than later, and even more so when the masses are affected.
I’m most disturbed with the politicians that were supposed to protect the public, but were in on the deal. They’ve been taking bribes from the banking and credit companies they were supposed to be regulating. And then repealing key regulations with the public paying a heavy price.
The solution must be multi-pronged.
- First and foremost we must fund our political system with taxpayer rather than special-interest dollars. It must be obvious the heavy price we’ve paid for the corruption and conflicts of interest in our current political system. This would not have happened had bribery not been allowed in our political system.
- Secondly, the rich are the only ones that can get us out of this mess. A tax increase on the wealthy, retroactive to January 2008, is necessary. We should create a government bond that allows them to buy in early and avoid a higher tax increase in 2009. (Saving this country from economic collapse should be worth a lot to them, so it’s time to call in some of the chips.)
Finally, we need a complete turnover of our politicians in both the state legislature and Congress. Maybe without political bribes flowing some of these guys would be pretty decent, but few of them have lifted a finger to stop the corrupt cash flow. It’s time for them to go.
Does Henry Paulson not understand ”root cause?”
There is but one root cause. Campaign cash causes politicians to spend money, or it wouldn’t be given. That drives deficits out of sight, causes high and unnecessary taxes, and regulations to be lifted and markets to crash. That’s pretty sad. These jokers’ kids will pay the price too.
Have they no shame?
And please don’t tell me you don’t want to spend taxpayer dollars for political campaigns. We already are. This bailout will be 1000 times what public funding of campaigns would have cost us.
See also:
So, campaign dollars had nothing to do with this?
Political conflicts of interest take another turn
– Lohman is a retired business owner from Colgate and publishes http://MoneyedPoliticians.net. He authored “Politicians – Owned and Operated by Corporate America” and can be reached at jlohman@execpc.com.
Lou Dobbs reported last night that the new CEO of Washington Mutual, who had been on the job only 3 weeks, got $18 million. He did not report what the CEO before him got before he was replaced. The stockholders? They got the shaft. Many people had WaMu inbedded in their mutual funds in their retirement accounts. And those very same financial people, who knew WaMu was insolvent, did not remove this firm from the portfolios of their customers, and now want us to bail out Wall St.?
That’s criminal, GaPatriot. There needs to be some shareholder lawsuits and board members held accountable.
And Republicans wonder why “Republican” has become a dirty word. We’ve got a bunch of spineless sheeple who will simply never call a spade a spade. And lest anyone think that the “Paulistas” are some alien life form, we’re the best thing going against socialism and big government and open borders and many other things. Corporate criminals aren’t above scrutiny with us. Hypocrites.
Actually, I’d like to see our political system revert to a zero party system. As it is now, it is just a two-party conspiracy. With zero parties you’d vote for the individual and he’d have to sell you on his beliefs. He might be R, D, or L. There are more Independents than in any other party, but the system is weighted against them.
I would disagree with your premise that campaign contributions are the root cause of out financial crises. I think they are secondary. I believe the Fed is the real root cause.
What part of money do you not understand? It is given because giving works. And it did work here, and now we are wondering why we are in trouble.
Jack,
Nothing will change unless we vote for change, and that means not voting for either of the two corrupt parties.
It is amazing how hard it is for people to give up their life-long prejudices for their favorite party even after seeing all the corruption, lies, ineffective legislation, and general b.s. that comes from the the DEM/GOP/MSM propaganda machines.
This virtual lock on power by the two majors has produced only partisanship which has replaced leadership. Every election is always about power, and every one is billed out as the “most important election of our time”.
The usual fear tactics are then applied. The GOP tells us we are about to be invaded as illegals pour accross the border. The Dems tell us to fear the elimination of SS that will leave us out in the streets while the program has been robbed, is going broke, and nothing has been done to fix it.
You can add the myriad other fear tactics used by both parties, but the point remains that unless and until we actually vote for new blood and new thinking, we will be doomed to getting more of the same. It is insane to do the same old thing and expect a different result.
If anyone wants to use the old argument that Independent/Third Party candidates don’t win, and therefore that person will not vote I/TP, then we have a classic case of circular reasoning. Of course the I/TP candidates don’t win because we don’t vote for them.
The real answer is to vote I/TP and the hell with the corrupt elites from both parties who are destroying this great nation.
Joe, I know how you feel. I hate voting for the lesser of two evils, but until we get some solid voter reforms we are stuck where we are. Here are articles I’ve written on IRV and NOTA:
http://tinyurl.com/3lqpuw
http://tinyurl.com/5aukma