How Long Did I Sleep?
April 1, 2009
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Posted by Michael S. Langston
The United States continues to drift further away from the capitalist policies which gave it the most powerful system in the world.
The house, not happy with furor over their idiotic after-the-fact tax, believes they can now pass bills stating specifc amounts and types of pay executives should get (here):
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Following on the furor over multimillion-dollar bonuses paid to traders at American International Group, the House approved legislation Wednesday that would limit compensation for executives and employees at financial institutions receiving money from the government’s $700 billion financial bailout package.
The legislation was approved 247-171. The majority of the support for the bill came from Democrats.
“Bonuses must be passed on performance standards,” said Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., the chief sponsor of the bill. “If they don’t want this, they can pay the taxpayers back the billions we have provided.”
Grayson’s bill requires all future compensation to be performance-based…
The arrogance it must take to think a normal salary or retention bonus isn’t based upon performance because they think it’s too high, or too much, or whatever boogles the mind.
Meanwhile of course, the President is following the arrogance path by announcing such things as the removal of a private company’s CEO, changes in their board of directors, and attempting to direct one international company to merge with an American company under the belief this will help that company continue.
Chrysler must become friends with Fiat pronto.
The U.S. government has threatened to suspend federal aid for Chrysler unless it secures a deal with the Italian carmaker within 30 days, senior administration officials told Forbes.
…GM (GM: 1.92, -0.0978, -4.85%) CEO Rick Wagoner is stepping down immediately, the government said on Monday, and is being succeeded by the company’s Chief Operating Officer, Fritz Henderson. Kent Kresa, a GM board member since 2003, will serve as interim chairman….
It’s almost as if, like Rip Van Winkle, I feel asleep for many years only to wake up in some alternate universe that doesn’t resemble the free society to which I’ve grown accustom.
Instead, we live in a brand new world, where due to some cult status/idol worship for our leaders (great article here), we’ve completely lost the understanding that giving the executive branch this much power will only continue to hurt us in the long run.
I seem to have left a world where private companies understood that private failure is a better solution for companies who have made bad decisions than to be artificially propped up by governmental control.
A world where even the most arrogant legislator or President never thought they could understand the market complexities; where solutions come from millions of independent interactions that no mere mortal could understand.
A world where government officials, who continue to waste tax payer dollars with figures in the trillions, didn’t have the guts to complain about how private businesses spend their money.
A world where great writings such as the Federalist Papers, the US Constitution, Hayek, Locke, Adam Smith, and many, many others… are just relecks of the past.
A world where normal humans knew their limitations and actively sought humility as a virtue.
Categories: Business, Critical Thinking, Economics, Free Market Principles, History, Legislation, Political Philosophy
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Tags: Business, Critical Thinking, Free Market Principles, Legislation, Political Philosophy
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