(no subject)

[bzarcher]

Y'know, I think flemco has a good point here.

AIG utterly fails and screams that they need a bailout.

The government does so, but says the AIG execs have to stop wasting money.

AIG continues to waste money. And then goes back and begs for more from the Government. That's -our- money.

So, they're deliberately mis-using government resources and putting the security of the country at risk, then. They have been criminally disloyal to the state.

That's high treason.

Let's gather up all these high priced executives. Let's put them on trial. And if they can't justify what they've been doing to a judge and jury of 12 good men and women, let's hang the sons of bitches.

Comments

[mithikall.livejournal.com]

hangin's too good for 'em.
let em go do charity/community work in destitute places. that'd be crueler.

[mithikall.livejournal.com]

Also, your link is to the older story, sir; they have done it again, this time with some golf tour, and not just partying, those fuckers sponsored half the pot.

[mithikall.livejournal.com]

Though I can only find info from last October's. I heard on the radio last night about this 'new' one. Could be the same.

(I wish I could just edit my comments...)

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

This only makes it worse.

(I thought you could edit comments?)

[mithikall.livejournal.com]

I think only paid users can edit comments...

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

d'aww. :(

[snowspinner.livejournal.com]

AIG is a bit of a weird case, and the politics here interfere with sane courses of action. Basically, 95% of AIG, as a company, was peachy-keane fine. They were profitable, they were sane, they were providing useful services for the world, and they were well-managed.

5% of the company was involved in selling credit default swaps that were essentially an extremely high-priced gambling system.

That 5% over-leveraged the company beyond salvageability, and the government had to bail it out. But the first high-priced junket was, as I understand it, a long-planned seminar rewarding management in an area of the company that had no fault whatsoever for the fuckup, and had been doing great work.

And the fact of the matter is, rewarding management like that is part of the job. Just like giving you access to the corporate seats at Blue Jackets games every once in a while is part of keeping a competent and skilled tech support guy on the job, rewarding good work on the part of management is how you keep the good management. And presumably part of the point of bailing out AIG was to keep its good businesses functioning.

But because all of that is a complex issue, whereas "ZOMG COMPANY THE GOVERNMENT BAILED OUT IS TREATING EXECUTIVES WELL" is an easy thing to get outraged about, well, it goes predictably.

And I am torn. Because, well, I don't like using my tax dollars for big corporate retreats. But to my mind, that dislike gets thrown into a hopper with uncertainty over what responsibility means in the case of a multinational corporation with fingers in hundreds of pies and a board of directors that shifts responsibility away from any single agent. And uncertainty about what it means to bail out a company, and why we do it, and what the goal is. And all sorts of other very tricky concerns.

Ethical responsibility of corporations, and the relationship between government and commerce in a capitalist democracy are hard.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

I understand that rewards and compensation will always be part of the business, but I think that when you've already had a couple of warnings about the junket trips and spending money on those rewards, you need to be careful, and that means "look at how you are using the money and can justify the expense", not "Let's do everything we can to keep our names from being associated with this and hope nobody finds out."

I'd be a lot more forgiving about this behavior if a lot of it wasn't being carried out in a manner that screams "WE ARE DOING THE WRONG THING AND WE KNOW IT."

[chapel-of-words.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that you want to hang the people because they are misusing taxpayer money, rather than the ones who *gave* them the taxpayer money, and continue to do so even after plain evidence they aren't using it well. I personally don't give two rats asses about a company mismanaging its own funds, the company loses value, it goes bankrupt and the shareholders who invested in it are wiped out. As were the companies that didn't do proper risk management and put all their eggs into the poorly managed company. That's how it's supposed to work. And chances are that in a bankruptcy much of what was there will get bought up by people who probably have a clue, or at least are willing to put their money where their mouth is that they have a clue, to run it better.

If the concern truly is systemic shock to the system (which I think a case has never really been well made) the government can assist in mitigating that shock. But for heavens sake let bad companies fold up and go bankrupt and stop propping them up.

Tim C.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

If they keep mismanaging and misusing the money, I'm fine with the idea that we stop handing them money and deal with the results, but I think the bailout had too much of a panic reaction to be completely avoided. As it is, I think we -are- at the point where people should be saying "So what did you do with the money?" and if there aren't good answers, stop giving it out.

(I'd actually say a really good example for this is the old WPA in the 30s. A lot of the make-work projects got stopped. A lot of the building and infrastructure projects produced housing, municipal buildings, and stuff like hospitals and national guard armories that are still in very good use.)

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

As it is, I think we -are- at the point where people should be saying "So what did you do with the money?" and if there aren't good answers, stop giving it out.

Got your favorite RSS reader handy? No kidding. It's not part of the bailout, but the stimulus package, that all spending must be reported in a computer-readable Atom or RSS feed that will be publicly posted.

[chapel-of-words.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how a bad program well spent and transparently posted makes it all the sudden a good program. Biden has shifted Obama's message of "we're going to expose and humilate the politicans wasting the money" too "we're going to expose and humiliate the politicians who *aren't* spending the money". May have been a flub.

But all the transparency in the world isn't going to help without leadership. CAGW.org has posted all the pork projects for years - it's been out there and easily available, and yet here we have the first OMB spending bill in our major financial/economic crisis and there's another 9,000 pork projects by both parties.

Tim C.

[chapel-of-words.livejournal.com]

I completely agree on the infrastructure parts, the federal highway buildout is another great example. But that's not what we're getting. What we're getting is the Democrats (and Bush in 2008, now Obama) are coopting the same bad thought process that lead us into Iraq. Drum up fear of nightmare scenarios, use the fear to justify "we must do *something*", the something is worse than the status quo and makes the situation even worse, and then the worsening situation is used as justification for more bad actions.

AIG, GM, Chrylser, the worst of the banks - no one's drawing the line and saying "we're going to let bankruptcy run its course". It's very frustrating, it's how governments turn market corrections into market disasters that drive us into depressions. The worst case estimates of letting AIG go bankrupt at the time was that the Dow would drop to 7700. We're already past that and going lower, and we're also between $1.5-$2T further in direct spending thrown into the bonfire.

And it's all done on the back of fear mongering (just like the WMD case) - there was a poll CNN did that indicated 77% of people thought the US was in really bad shape economically, but if you asked them how *they* were doing, about the same amount (~70%) said they were doing fine.

Tim C.

[flaggerx.livejournal.com]

Personally, I like the stocks. It's old school, non-lethal and utterly, utterly humiliating. These are people whose ego could support a gas giant. Bring them down to earth.