Thread: The government giveth, and the government taketh away

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

I think the moral of the story is that given the chance, the government will do its very best to control what happens to your wealth;

Yes, but not like that. They are doing their best to control what is happening with THEIR money (which is also your money) which they gave to the companies SPECIFICALLY for bailing them out. The execs trying to scam their companies out of that money instead of trying to rescue the company should be beaten for their greed and arrogance.

This has nothing to do with them trying to provide an income for themselves. This is about abuse and greed.

The AIG bailout included an amendment allowing the contractual payout of bonuses. Apparently it was signed without anyone taking the time to read it. And now they're crying about it.

Originally Posted by Bruno

They are doing their best to control what is happening with THEIR money (which is also your money)

Exactly my point!

It is one of those damned if you do and damned if you don't situations. We would like to see the companies and people who got us into this mess go down the tubes but we don't want to go down the tubes with them.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

...we don't want to go down the tubes with them.

Then why are our elected officials signing us up for the great flushing of the tubes? If we truly wanted those companies to succeed, we would have bought more of their products and not sold our stock in them

As it is, the government has said "well, since you the public did not do enough to support a company going down the tubes, we will now force you to"

If I wanted to go down the tubes with them I would have bought stock in them - now I have no choice except to cast my vote to fire the part of Oklahoma's delegation that forced me to become part of an unwilling support group for companies that continue to make grand financial mistakes

I get that these are large and influential companies that a lot of people and other companies depend on. But it is not so bad that it can't be made worse and in my opinion that is what the government is doing by taking more and more control of private corporations

Originally Posted by Chimensch

What I'm reading is that this is all just politics. The bonus money is 0.1% of the total bailout. The politicians are making a big stink about the bonuses to distract attention from the fact that they haven't told us where the other 99.9% of the money is going.

Dov, I don't doubt that the politicians are doing this for politics... are they capable of thinking outside of their own interests ;-)

But I think there's a broader point opf principle here, and it doesn't matter if the bonuses consisted of 80% of the bailout money or 0.08%... it's our money, and I don't want to see it being frittered on peronal pay which far outstrips my own in renumeration.

And although proportionally it's small potatoes, it's still millions of pounds and dollars from taxpayers. 1% or not, it could be better spent (than on bonuses).

This sets a terribly dangerous precedent, on more than one level. I'm against it. I was against giving bailout in the first place.

AIG gave retention bonuses of up to 7 million i think... And many of those that got them left the company shortly after. It's just insanity... I feel a strong lack of intelligence within the business world as a whole. That said, im sure that there are some that are wise enough to make good decisions during these unstable times it's just that we really only hear about the ones making bad ones.


And as far as the bailout itself is concerned, I was for it. But I needed to see it go to companies that were struggling for reasons other than their own poor decisions. The auto industry really needs a boost. I'm not going to say that they have a perfect track record, but they are a staple in the american economy and the major difficulties they are dealing with are caused by the poor decisions of others. I do believe that they need to do more to better compete with the foreign competitors as well.

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

Then why are our elected officials signing us up for the great flushing of the tubes? If we truly wanted those companies to succeed, we would have bought more of their products and not sold our stock in them

As it is, the government has said "well, since you the public did not do enough to support a company going down the tubes, we will now force you to"

If I wanted to go down the tubes with them I would have bought stock in them - now I have no choice except to cast my vote to fire the part of Oklahoma's delegation that forced me to become part of an unwilling support group for companies that continue to make grand financial mistakes

I get that these are large and influential companies that a lot of people and other companies depend on. But it is not so bad that it can't be made worse and in my opinion that is what the government is doing by taking more and more control of private corporations

Reminds me of what we used to say when I was an ironworker years ago,"Do something even if it's wrong." The government is desperately trying to arrest the slide and the only tool the have is manipulating the markets and money. I am not well versed on what the Hoover administration did the last time a crisis of this magnitude was experienced. A different world back then but I have the impression they did little or nothing. Government taking a proactive approach may save us all or sink us all. Time will tell if it was better to do what they have done and are doing or to have done nothing at all.

Originally Posted by honedright

The AIG bailout included an amendment allowing the contractual payout of bonuses. Apparently it was signed without anyone taking the time to read it. And now they're crying about it.

A similar thing happened in the UK.

Part of the problem is that people high up always seem to have contracts that make it more expensive to sack them than carry on paying them. How on earth do they trick the companies into agreeing with these golden-handshake clauses?

Seriously, how? "I'd lke to join your company, but could you just change the contract so that If I mess up and have to leave, or if I just feel like going, you''ll pay me a few million?" What a sweet deal if you can get it.