Posted on 02/05/2009 6:35:52 AM PST by shortstop
Ding-ding-ding! We have a winner.
I understand the outrage, but there is a better Free Market solution.
Fire the CEOs as a condition of a bailout.
Then hire competent new ones at market rates, whatever those might be.
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So, any student borrowing from the FEDS to pay tuition can expect that one day big-brother will dictate what must be studied?
Any American receiving Social Security can expect that one day big-brother will dictate where he must live?
“Some animals are more equal than others”
Animal Farm
See post #15 in which Bawney Fwank and Geithner have proposed extending the salary cap to all companies, including those who did not take your bailout money.
Your pay is next to be capped.
Can we just fire bad CEOs instead of repealing the Free Market in toto?
Yup.
Don’t be on the Feederal dole if you don’t want to give up some of your freedom.
So the corporations and their officers have NO culpability?
WRONG!!!!
You should be ^far less^ comfortable with Obama’s use of fascist economics.
Presumably, he can eliminate all stock dividends for “shareholders”, in the name of government directed recovery.
For crying out loud! Why is it that conservatives are so easily distracted by issues like this rather than focusing on the real target which is killing this socialist “stimulus” package.
This only applies to companies that took taxpayer money for a bailout. Bitch about the government regs that in part brought this about but the gov regs were not the only reason these companies got into trouble; the execs running things deserve a fair part of the blame as well. The companies that are not running with our money are free to pay their CEOs anything they want.
Whining about this puts conservatives in the position of supporting the use of tax dollars to obviously maintain the lifestyles and perks of company execs. The money is supposed to help save the companies not save the execs lifestyles of the rich and famous. Yes Virginia, if they took our money then they signed on to regulation; but they are treating it like a gift from Santa. If they are successful in bringing the company out of trouble and paying back the taxpayer then the boards and shareholders can lavish whatever salaries they want on them.
This is a side issue and almost a non-issue. I could almost believe that BO Plenty’s advisors pushed announcing this knowing that conservatives would impulsively react, blow it out of proportion and pull attention away from the issue of killing the stimulus package. Give it a rest and get focused on what really matters.
I didn’t say that.
Bubbles can be created from thin air, but this one wasn’t.
Companies and their executives are culpable, but they are #5 on my list. Government Agencies, Liberal impulses and lawyers set up the bulk of the infrastructure of the bubble.
I’ll repeat in the next post my full analysis.
Then we should take this opportunity to thank all of the welfare bum bank execs who ran screaming to Congress to beg to get on the dole. They foisted us into this.
The CEOs affected by this brought it on themselves when they agreed to take money from the government. But when they start decreeing it for businesses that don’t take the handouts, it’s going to hit the fan.
1) The Fed (Greenspan) loosened money supply tremendously after 9/11/2001. That was a good idea, since the “grease” of money was needed to keep the financial machinery moving in the money center of New York, a target of the attacks.
2) The Fed continued to dump money into the system well into 2003 (and up to 2005 IIRD), long after it was needed. The WSJ screamed from the rooftops about excess money supply.
3) Real Interest Rates (Cost of Money Interest less Inflation) were negative for several years. This was the Fed’s way of BEGGING people to take the money: “It’s better than free, we’re paying you to take our money!”. Many did.
4) That excess money had to go somewhere. Housing looked like a good bet. Many people put their excess money into housing.
5) Congress, in the person of Bawney Fwank, whose gay lover was a key Director at the appropriately named Fannnie, wanted looser morals / restriction around Fannie. He (and most other Congresscritters and Bush too) wanted everyone to own a home. Even people who couldn’t afford them. So they passed laws making sure Fannie could blow it out the back door.
6) Wall Street invented some really nifty financial vehicles that nobody really understood, but they allowed tremendous amounts of money to be bet on the future direction of housing prices. These financial vehicles appeared to be low risk; they had Fannies name associated with them. Everyone got rich hawking these things (CDOs, etc.)
7) Lots of people thought they could get rich quick by investing in alternative asset classes, including Hedge Funds. Hedgies agreed to take their money, and put the proceeds into those nifty new Financial Vehicles like CDOs, which had always gone up and not down. Everyone’s a winner!
8) ACORN assisted by one Barack Obama sued banks over “red lining,” which was defined as the effect of maintaining good lending practices. When you have conservative lending practices, you tend to lend to good earners who can pay you back. They tend to be in the suburbs. Those non-earners in the city tend not to get loans. This looks like racism, since the relative non-earners are people of color in the city. ACORN won a bunch of lawsuits by screaming “racism,” and banks quickly learned to loan anyone money, whether they could repay or not. The just quickly packaged up those loans and sold them to the Wall Street Hedgies so they wouldn’t be holding the bag when the sh*t hit the fan.
Eventually, housing prices stopped going up (the music stopped), and everyone looked for the economic exits (”where’s my chair?”) There were no chairs. Everyone was expecting the other guy to be holding the actual value, yet nobody had actual value. All that paper was predicated on a bunch of people who couldn’t really pay their mortgages because they were too poor to start with, or had placed their own bets (with big houses they couldn’t afford) that housing prices would rise forever.
Voila! Housing crisis.
they should never have gotten bailout money in the first place,Umm...I said that.
The Marxists enact laws that are ***guaranteed** to make the banking business fail.
Then to “solve” the crisis that they created, the Marxists essentially nationalize the banking business using the mantra of “capitalism failed”.
Have you read what is going on in the state of New York over apartment rents? The same thing!
The Marxists enact all sorts of zoning and environmental laws that make building apartments expensive and hard to build.
The rents rise as a result of an artificial ( government created) shortage.
The Marxists then enact price controls on rents. This makes it even **more** unprofitable to build or own any apartments whatsoever.
Apartments grow even harder to find for any renter. It is impossible for the owners of apartment buildings to make a profit or keep up repairs. Existing apartments are totally abandoned by their owners and allowed to collapse or catch fire.
Our government Marxists seeing that “capitalism failed” then take over the apartment building and apartment renting business, and everyone except the state approved elite get to live in Soviet-style cement block housing.
Sudetenland, please read “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. The woman was a visionary, and completely right!
Right.
I think it is PR and grandstanding on the Pres. part
correction: to companies that take future bailout money. Those who already have it are exempted.
It' kind of funny, many of these banks were forced to make the unwise decisions that caused them to be in a position where they could be coerced into taking taxpayer money to survive and have gained control over private enterprise.
Now we can call it welfare and actually support the takeover because it's our money.
Got to give 'em credit, it was a brilliant plan to get the peoples support for fascism
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