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The basic concept of capitalism is that it's "self-regulating" -- if you make good economic decisions, the market rewards you with bushel baskets of profit; if you make bad ones, the market punishes you because your business fails.
So -- by bailing out the companies who have failed, the government is now in the business of saving companies from capitalism. I can understand the fear that if they don't do this, then the foundations of our economy will collapse entirely into another worldwide Depression. But that doesn't change the fundamental truth that capitalism, as a concept, has evidently failed. "Epic fail" as the interweb might label it.
I liked Obama's speech yesterday on the economy. He said that any solution must address four points: 1) it must help "Main Street" as well as Wall Street -- in other words, it must also work to 'bail out' ordinary Americans; 2) CEOs must not profit from their mistakes; 3) the solution has to be temporary and contain oversight; 4) it can't simply be an "American" solution; it should be global.
I agree with all of those. I especially agree with #2: for too long, CEOs and corporate execs who have run their companies into the ground have escaped not only unscathed from the wreckage, but wealthier than when they came in. One only need to look as far as John McCain's senior financial advisor Carly Fiorina, who while CEO and Chair of the Board for Hewlett Packard, made a terrifically poor decision to merge her company with Compaq, which halved HP's value amid severe job losses, yet she received $21 million dollars as her 'severance package' when HP's Board of Directors finally fired her.
Hey, I have an idea: I'm going to order every credit card I can, run them up as high as possible, and when I hit the point where I can't possibly make payments on my enormous debt, I want the government to step in and take over to pay off my debt for me. And I'd like to have them also give me three or four times my annual salary to convince me to resign from running my finances. OK?
Yeah. I thought so.
So -- by bailing out the companies who have failed, the government is now in the business of saving companies from capitalism. I can understand the fear that if they don't do this, then the foundations of our economy will collapse entirely into another worldwide Depression. But that doesn't change the fundamental truth that capitalism, as a concept, has evidently failed. "Epic fail" as the interweb might label it.
I liked Obama's speech yesterday on the economy. He said that any solution must address four points: 1) it must help "Main Street" as well as Wall Street -- in other words, it must also work to 'bail out' ordinary Americans; 2) CEOs must not profit from their mistakes; 3) the solution has to be temporary and contain oversight; 4) it can't simply be an "American" solution; it should be global.
I agree with all of those. I especially agree with #2: for too long, CEOs and corporate execs who have run their companies into the ground have escaped not only unscathed from the wreckage, but wealthier than when they came in. One only need to look as far as John McCain's senior financial advisor Carly Fiorina, who while CEO and Chair of the Board for Hewlett Packard, made a terrifically poor decision to merge her company with Compaq, which halved HP's value amid severe job losses, yet she received $21 million dollars as her 'severance package' when HP's Board of Directors finally fired her.
Hey, I have an idea: I'm going to order every credit card I can, run them up as high as possible, and when I hit the point where I can't possibly make payments on my enormous debt, I want the government to step in and take over to pay off my debt for me. And I'd like to have them also give me three or four times my annual salary to convince me to resign from running my finances. OK?
Yeah. I thought so.