Stop bailing out the bloody bastard rich with my tax money.
November 19th, 2008 by Tam I MI’m sick and tired of the bloody bailout of the rich by our tax dollars. These same sons-of-bitches that have been ripping us off for decades are now begging for more money from the government to bail themselves out. And bail is what they will do - off to their off-shore mansions with their pockets full of our money. As they themselves love to say when they are raping us blind, “let the free market decide”. Nobody’s bailing out my small business when we’re struggling to barely pay our bills. Why the hell should we bail out these thieves? God forbid the government give back some of our own tax money to help education, healthcare, etc. If that happens, everyone starts screaming “Socialism”. But it’s A-OK to give TRILLIONS to corporations as corporate welfare. Sorry folks, this is pure Marxism and Fascism. When Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez started nationalizing his counrty’s oil, we were yelling “Communism”. Now our own government is buying out banks and effectively nationalizing them, but no one is screaming “Communism”. And then they continue to tell us their big lies - “If such and such company collapses, there will be thousands of jobs lost.” As if they don’t go laying off people ANYWAY when they do get the fat checks. I have yet to see ONE CEO come out and say, “Hey, you know, times are bad and I’m gonna take a $200 million/year pay cut so that we can keep a thousand employees.” Instead, they want to be bailed out so that they can continue collecting their fat checks and cashing in on their stock options and MOVING OUT OF THE COUNTRY to their villas in Dubai. Let the giants crash and fall. Let the free market decide. I believe the following George Carlin video summarizes my sentiments best:
November 20th, 2008 at 6:03 am
While it’s true that no one has taken a $200 million paycut, does a $53 million paycut sound okay to you? Because the CEO of Goldman Sachs agreed to cutting his bonus for this year (last year’s total compensation was $54 million). The top 7 company officials at Goldman have agreed to drop their bonuses for 2008, leaving them with a base pay of $600,000 each. Here’s the article: http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-finance/20081117/Goldman.Sachs.Bonuses/
Considering that Goldman Sachs received financial assistance from Uncle Sam, this move is very appropriate. What’s even better is that this creates an onus on other companies to do the same, like at UBS: http://www.kansascity.com/business/story/895570.html
November 20th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Thanks for pointing out the Goldman Sachs example, but sadly it’s a rare case and not the norm. Also, how much bonuses have they been getting in the past years..umm, let’s see…they’ve been making around $54 million a year. Poor little rich guys now have to live on a mere lousy $600K a year. How will they survive?
I think the worst one was AIG with their executives spending $400K on a resort right after they got their bailout money. Party time! Why not when it’s the taxpayer’s dime?
I do feel sorry for the automakers though because most of them are really suffering because of the pension deals they got locked into by the Autoworkers Unions. They simply can’t compete with the Japanese automakers at that rate. But again, if you can’t run a competitive business, then let the market decide your fate. That’s how it works for every small business and that’s how it should work for everyone else. Why should they get rewarded for making wrong executive decisions and not managing their businesses properly?
November 20th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
My personal favorite is now the heads of the 3 US automakers flying to Washington in PRIVATE JETS (costing 10s of thousands of $$$ to operate per trip) to beg for a bailout. Absolutely priceless.
GM and Chrysler need to go into Chapter 11 and reorganize. Its the only way they can ever have a chance of becoming competitive. Their business model is completely flawed, and now they try to milk the taxpayer out of billions to pay for their years of mistakes. File for chapter 11, kick out all the fat-cats at the top, kill off the union contracts and kill off redundant brands. Toyota has 3 brands, GM has something like, 10 or so? Ridiculous.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Yep, I definitely agree about the automakers. It’s pointless to give them money at this point when it will go towards continuing the same unsound business practices. Four years later they’ll be back begging for more ’cause they would’ve wasted any money given to them now.
November 27th, 2008 at 7:43 am
I disagree. The question shouldn’t be whether the American automakers’ businesses are sound at this time. The question should be: can America AFFORD to let these companies go out of business?
Let’s take pensions for example. If the companies go into bankruptcy, they won’t be making monthly pension payments to millions of American retirees. Uncle Sam will end up taking over the pension plans, and America gets stuck with the bills.
Let’s look at health coverage. If the current workers at these firms lose their jobs, and their health insurance benefits are terminated, the states and the fed will end up paying the bills (i.e. via Medicare for the now poor American families).
Let’s look at unemployment benefits. G.W. Bush just signed into law this month a bill extending unemployment compensation by like 2 months. So if the automakers go out of business, millions of workers will lose their jobs, and enroll for unemployment benefits. Again state and federal govts will shell out more $ in benefits for these newly unemployed.
If the automakers get a bailout from Uncle Sam, that would allow more input and pressure from the lawmakers to get these companies to adopt more sound busness practices. GM’s got too many brands? The bailout would give GM time to reduce the number. I think we all agree that the cars being made by American automakers aren’t nearly as good as the ones from foreign carmakers right now. By offering bailouts, with strings attached, Uncle Sam will give the big 3 time to turn their businesses around. Otherwise, at least one of these companies will run out of cash and go out of business by the end of this year.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
So basically every corporation that screws up should be rewarded with billions of dollars? I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous. The whole question is why should the government bail out any company? In the case of the banks, what we have now is major ownership of these companies by the government. Umm, this is supposed to be a democracy (not really, it’s supposed to be a REPUBLIC, but these days it’s neither) run by capitalism. Ownership of the banking institutions by the government brings us to Marxism. As I pointed out, our government has been trying to assassinate elected rulers of other countries for exactly this reason because they were nationalizing their oil companies and banks and cutting our corporations out of the fat profits we were making in their countries. But of course, our hypocrisy has no end. When we do the same things, it’s perfectly OK because we’re “helping the American citizens”. Well, what about the other countries who do it to help THEIR own citizens? God forbid that happens because then we decide that we should go and bomb them till they welcome our corporations back in their countries.
The fastest and most cost-effective way to help these companies “streamline” is to let them file for bankruptcy and then re-organize. It would be much cheaper to offer the unemployment benefits than the billions these fat cats want to pocket. The giant corporations have taken over everywhere and completely wiped out small businesses, which used to be the backbone of America. The problem with large corporations like Wal-mart is that they kill local competition and 50% of a town winds up working for them. And then when they die, you have 50% of the town jobless. On the other hand, a diverse and strong number of small businesses and effectively provide the same, if not higher, level of employment, and if one of them dies, the impact isn’t so huge on the local population. So yeah, it’s true that large companies do provide jobs, but just because they provide a large number of jobs doesn’t mean we should keep giving them money and rewarding them for incompetence.
The other issue is, if we bail out the auto industry, then why not everyone else. You open the door to one sector and everyone else will come knocking. Next Circuit City will want a bailout, Mervyn’s wil want a bailout, etc. etc. It’s not the government’s job to bail out failing corporations. If they so believe in Capitalism, then let the system sort itself out.
The one point that I agree with is that if bailouts are given, there should be strings attached, but that’s not gonna happen. If there are conditions, then some agency has to make sure that they are being met. And that would create even more bureaucracy and even bigger government. Someone will have to audit their books and make sure the money is being used properly. Just look at how well we’re managing the Iraq War and you’ll know that billions will be lost and stolen and mis-used and no one will account for it. And just look at the bailout money we’re giving to the banks. Paulson basically said, “Let’s give them the money and we’ll trust them to do the right thing.” What a joke. If these vultures were doing the right thing to start with, we wouldn’t be in this situation. So what incentive do they have to do the right thing now when they are being rewarded for their previous performance? Every one of these banking institutions knew exactly what they were doing and exactly what impact it would have, but they turned a blind eye because everyone on every level was making money, from the loan officer up.
Also, there is going to be no accountability because this problem happened because of the fact that the government dropped the ball and also completely de-regulated every safety measure that was in place to prevent something like this from happening in the first place. They just let the banks run rampant without any sort of regulation whatsoever. And now we’re giving billions to Citigroup to continue the same practices. Not only that, the government is even covering Citigroup’s toxic assets to the tune of $306 billion. THREE HUNDRED AND SIX BILLION DOLLARS. And you’re worried about lousy unemployment benefit costs? Why is it that Americans think it’s a crime that the taxes they pay should not be used to their own benefit? Are we so brain-washed by the myth of trickle down economics that we actually believe it’s in our best interest to give the billions to the corporations? As if they have our best interests on their minds. I think not.