It's nice to be a bank. You can lend people money you don't have, and make reckless investments at that. Then, when the reckless investments bail, er, I mean fail, economists are eager to justify subsidizing you through public funds in the interest of the "public good". I wonder how hard these guys are laughing when they're on the way to the bank.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
>"Banks in the U.S. and abroad are among the biggest winners in the federal government's revamped $150 billion bailout of American International Group Inc...Banks in the U.S., Europe and Canada bought credit-default swaps on these securities from AIG, which in turn promised to compensate them if the securities defaulted. Defaults haven't been a major problem, but the market values of these CDOs fell sharply over the past year or so...Throughout its AIG rescue efforts during the past two months, the government has had the banks in its sights; it made its initial bailout of AIG in part to avoid potential bank losses that might have threatened the broader financial system...The banks that participate will be compensated for the securities' full, or par, value in exchange for allowing AIG to unwind the credit-default swaps it wrote..."It's like a home run for some of the banks," says Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at ICP Capital, a fixed-income investment firm in New York. "They bought insurance from a company that ran into trouble and still managed to get all, or most, of their money back."
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Boycott Firms that Receive Government Aid
The Wall Street Journal writes of another homeless corporation that is panhandling for $3.5 billion from the federal government: American Express. According to the Journal:
"The card issuer is the latest company not directly hit by the housing crisis to request cash from the federal government. While retailers, car companies and others hit by the slowdown in consumer spending haven't gotten the government money, financial firms of all kinds are getting federal bailouts."
There are about 130 million Americans who file tax returns but about one third of these pay no taxes, so the number of taxpayers is about 86 million. With a bailout of $750 billion, each taxpayer pays on average $8,720 to subsidize inept millionaire investment bankers, slothful auto executives and now, if they have their way, the people who bring you the American Express card.
I take it personally that my taxes are being raised to subsidize bozos at badly managed firms. I think that all Americans should just say no to any firm that receives a subsidy. The American car companies have been indifferent to the plight of their employees for decades. Now, they claim public subsidies. Investment bankers have been overpaid for decades. Now, they want average earners to subsidize their inept practices.
Boycott American Express. Boycott General Motors. Boycott the lot of them.
"The card issuer is the latest company not directly hit by the housing crisis to request cash from the federal government. While retailers, car companies and others hit by the slowdown in consumer spending haven't gotten the government money, financial firms of all kinds are getting federal bailouts."
There are about 130 million Americans who file tax returns but about one third of these pay no taxes, so the number of taxpayers is about 86 million. With a bailout of $750 billion, each taxpayer pays on average $8,720 to subsidize inept millionaire investment bankers, slothful auto executives and now, if they have their way, the people who bring you the American Express card.
I take it personally that my taxes are being raised to subsidize bozos at badly managed firms. I think that all Americans should just say no to any firm that receives a subsidy. The American car companies have been indifferent to the plight of their employees for decades. Now, they claim public subsidies. Investment bankers have been overpaid for decades. Now, they want average earners to subsidize their inept practices.
Boycott American Express. Boycott General Motors. Boycott the lot of them.
George Bush, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi: Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest
It is difficult to consider a more ill advised policy than propping up managements of large, poorly managed firms. Yet, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and George Bush have decided to provide a massive subsidy to inept Wall Street executives. Few politicians in history have concocted dumber policies, but, believe it or not, the Democrats have come up with an even dumber idea: bail out Detroit as well as Wall Street.
According to the Wall Street Journal :
"Democratic leaders in Congress said Tuesday they will push legislation next week to use the $700 billion Wall Street rescue fund to bail out Detroit auto makers, and President-elect Barack Obama ordered his transition team to look at ways to aid the car industry even before his inauguration."
A good book on the mismanagement of the auto industry is John Z. De Lorean's and J. Patrick Wright's "On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors".
De Lorean's descriptions of massive incompetence and waste at General Motors in the early 1970s, 35 years ago, makes the reader laugh out loud. After four or five decades of GM's utter incompetence, the Democrats are eager to raise your and my taxes to force us to subsidize GM. If they made cars we wanted they wouldn't need the subsidy.
Isn't GM the company whose selfishness Michael Moore contemned two decades ago for moving half its plants to Mexico, stiffing American workers and thumbing its nose at Flint, Michigan in the name of "private property" and the prerogatives of private corporations? And now the Democrats are shelling out tens of billions of dollars to these self-indulgent incompetents?
Excuse me for my snit, but this is getting out of hand.
According to the Wall Street Journal :
"Democratic leaders in Congress said Tuesday they will push legislation next week to use the $700 billion Wall Street rescue fund to bail out Detroit auto makers, and President-elect Barack Obama ordered his transition team to look at ways to aid the car industry even before his inauguration."
A good book on the mismanagement of the auto industry is John Z. De Lorean's and J. Patrick Wright's "On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors".
De Lorean's descriptions of massive incompetence and waste at General Motors in the early 1970s, 35 years ago, makes the reader laugh out loud. After four or five decades of GM's utter incompetence, the Democrats are eager to raise your and my taxes to force us to subsidize GM. If they made cars we wanted they wouldn't need the subsidy.
Isn't GM the company whose selfishness Michael Moore contemned two decades ago for moving half its plants to Mexico, stiffing American workers and thumbing its nose at Flint, Michigan in the name of "private property" and the prerogatives of private corporations? And now the Democrats are shelling out tens of billions of dollars to these self-indulgent incompetents?
Excuse me for my snit, but this is getting out of hand.
Conservatives Should Disempower Left-wing Propaganda
Raquel Okyay is a noted New York State conservative. She ran for City Council in Queens and now is a major figure in the Republican Liberty Caucus in New Paltz, New York. Recently she wrote an excellent blog arguing that "Obama won by lies, fraud and manipulation." Okyay makes some excellent points about the mass media's bias. But she argued that the New York Times is "a major partisan news organization".
I correct Okyay on her blog as follows:
"No, no, no. The Times is the 'pissant media'. Don’t empower it. It is a pissant. Nothing more. Please don’t call it 'major'. It is as major as the biggest ant you can think of, a quarter inch or so."
Okyay wrote back to me:
"You're right, what was I thinking?? I changed it to pissant."
But I was wrong about one thing. The Times is not media. It is propaganda. Media implies communication of information. The Times does not communicate information; it propagandizes and lies. Conservatives have made the error of empowering pissant propaganda sources like the Times by calling them "mainstream", "media", "MSM" and "major". They are not mainstream, major nor media.
Conservatives need to raise their consciousness and begin to disempower propaganda sources. I think there needs to be consciousness raising among conservatives. Conservatives need a new vocabulary attendant upon a new consciousness. Conservatives need to evolve away from the categories that statist left wing murderers have constructed. "Progressivism" is not progressive; "liberals" are not liberal; socialism is anti-social; and the news media provides neither news nor serves as media. There is nothing "mainstream" about the New York Times nor network television. Nor is there anything major about them.
I correct Okyay on her blog as follows:
"No, no, no. The Times is the 'pissant media'. Don’t empower it. It is a pissant. Nothing more. Please don’t call it 'major'. It is as major as the biggest ant you can think of, a quarter inch or so."
Okyay wrote back to me:
"You're right, what was I thinking?? I changed it to pissant."
But I was wrong about one thing. The Times is not media. It is propaganda. Media implies communication of information. The Times does not communicate information; it propagandizes and lies. Conservatives have made the error of empowering pissant propaganda sources like the Times by calling them "mainstream", "media", "MSM" and "major". They are not mainstream, major nor media.
Conservatives need to raise their consciousness and begin to disempower propaganda sources. I think there needs to be consciousness raising among conservatives. Conservatives need a new vocabulary attendant upon a new consciousness. Conservatives need to evolve away from the categories that statist left wing murderers have constructed. "Progressivism" is not progressive; "liberals" are not liberal; socialism is anti-social; and the news media provides neither news nor serves as media. There is nothing "mainstream" about the New York Times nor network television. Nor is there anything major about them.
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