Bail All You Want, But…

I didn’t cause this crisis, and I don’t want to pay for it.  So if my government wants to use my tax dollars to save the American banking and investment banking system from collapse, to provide liquidity to the markets, to maintain business infrastructure, I understand.  But I have something to ask in return.

All those nice, young broker and banker people who received multi-million dollar bonuses; all those CEOs, CFOs, COOs, GCs and any other initials you can think of, who receive multi-multi-million dollar bonuses;

I want it back. 

Their enterprises are going belly up, and my government is going to save them because “they’re too big to fail,” “they will bring down the economy,” whatever, fair enough.  But the people who were paid millions and are responsible for every bone-headed decision that gave rise to this problem don’t deserve the money.  They sucked their millions out the back door, and now the government is using my money to bail them out through the front.  And they get to keep it?  That’s baloney.

I want it back.

Ill-gotten gains are monies taken but not earned.  Ill-gotten gains are monies taken under false pretenses, by fraud, by lies and deceit.  Sheer stupidity should now be added to the list, not because it’s criminal but because somebody has to pay for that sheer stupidity, and it shouldn’t be me.  I didn’t screw up.  I didn’t blow it.  They did, and they got paid millions for their efforts.

I want it back.

Where’s the incentive for those who held tight the reins of our money markets to make good decisions when it comes risk?  Where the incentive for those who had no say in our money markets to make good decisions when it comes to risk?  Those who didn’t risk are the ones who still have homes and savings.  These are the people who will be paying taxes.  Their taxes will be used to bail out those who made bad decisions.  But the people who made the bad decisions get bailed out by the people who didn’t make bad decisions, and get to keep the millions they were paid while making bad decisions.

I want it back.

And all those foreclosed houses, that will be taken off the books, hide a terrible little secret.  There won’t be anyone paying the property taxes.  The tax base will shrink overnight.  So those who didn’t jump in over their heads, who pay their mortgage, who pay their taxes, will now be paying the taxes for all those who aren’t.  And the banks, who foreclosed, won’t be paying them either, since they will be laying their bad assets off on the government.  And the government doesn’t pay.  So it all falls on the shoulders of those who did it the old-fashioned way, and we will be carrying the load that won’t get paid so that all the others can enjoy the fine services government has to offer on our dime.

I want it back.

But I won’t get it back. 

This morning, we had a discussion about all of this.  Our investment banking friends might be out of work, but they fortunately have earned enough that they can retire and live quite well for the rest of their lives.  And they’re only 29.  I, on the other hand, will still have to work for a living.  Nobody ever paid me a $10 million bonus. 

Sorry for the rant. 

Discover more from Simple Justice

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

12 thoughts on “Bail All You Want, But…”

  2. Badtux

    Indeed, that’s what irritates me most about all of this. A corporation can literally commit murder (literally — i.e, knowingly and with complete depravity towards human life sell a product that they know kills people) and the most that will ever happen is a lawsuit judgment against the company. Nobody goes to jail. Nobody loses everything they own. The worst that happens is that the corporation declares Chapter 13 and disbands, and the top executives of the corporation shrug and go found another company that does the same thing. It’s “The Corporation” that is assumed to be the “person” in these cases, even though it was specific executives within “The Corporation” that made these decisions. But the specific executives who made these decisions are never brought to justice, with very rare exceptions (see: Ken Lay, except he “died” before having to report to serve his sentence).

    The notion of a limited liability corporation was originally created to indemnify the stockholders, not the executives. Yet in practice, it is the stockholders left holding the worthless stock certificates of bankrupt corporations and the executives merely move on and count their millions. Something is out of whack here…

  3. Joel Rosenberg

    I got almost nothing. Almost.

    Risky investments are, though, good, often, on balance. For everybody. In moderation.

    Take the present crisis. Most folks who got subprime loans, after all (and those are the risky folks) didn’t default on them, and now they (and, indirectly, the rest of us) get the benefit of their home ownership.

    Yup; the folks who (for whatever reason, good or bad) ended up owning too much of the bad mortgages are going to lose most or all of what they risked. And taxpayers will do some bailing. Lots. (Not as much as some people are worrying about, but lots.)

    Home prices are — and will be, sure — depressed, which will be more than a little depressing for those folks who want to sell and move. But, in the long run, most of those abandoned homes will get bought by people who will live in them, or rent them out to other folks who will live in them.

    As to the folks who — through cupidity, willful and/or other ignorance, or whatever — who made out like bandits, yup, most of them will get away with it. And it’s okay to be mad about that.

    But if whatever new regulations come down the pike make folks who manage money too risk-averse, it’ll be a lot worse for everybody.

    As to the bonus, sure. As I understand it, any criminal defense lawyer who is offered a ten million dollar bonus if he wins would be best off saying, “No, I don’t work that way,” if not “Excuse me; I just remembered an urgent engagement in the Outer Hebrides.”

    As I understand it, the implicit deal in such situations is that if you don’t win, Mrs. Simple Justice gets your jacket backed, wrapped around a fish.

  4. SHG

    I wrote last week about the payments to my Wall Street buddies, noting that if they weren’t paid these monstrous salaries and bonuses, they would still work there as it’s not like they have a skillset that would enable them to perform any useful task. 

    The repertoire of an investment banker is the ability to have three stiff drinks and remain cogent.  It’s not brain surgery.

  5. Windypundit

    Of course, when some Spitzer-esque prosecutor goes after these people for the crime of “monies taken under false pretenses, by fraud, by lies and deceit,” the rules of karma now dictate that you will have them as clients…

  6. SHG

    And they will be charged accordingly.  Or, as Mrs. Simple Justice likes to say, “no one gets away Scott-free.”

  7. Joel Rosenberg

    While I’m sure that your fees are appropriate, my guess is that those charges aren’t the ones that they should be most worried about, when that happens; it’ll be the ones from “The People of the State of New York,” or “The United States of America.”

Comments are closed.