What, it was like a secretary? Clearly, the administration flunky or whoever asked you to do this, dude, is not going to stand up and name him- or herself. “Yeah, it was me, my bad, I’m positively eager to take responsibility and become the most hated person in America right now, whoopsie daisy, sorry ’bout that.” Clearly that is not going to happen, so who was it? TALK.
I also reiterate my point of earlier today that once we started bailing out these people, knowing they were fuckups, we really had no right to begin expecting them not to be fuckups anymore, because that’s not how the world works. I’m not defending the bonuses; I am saying hey, this is why the club of the most of us looked at the bailouts in the first place and said “… the fuck?”
Most of us have seen first hand the excesses of corporate America for years, and having seen my own not-so-benevolent overlord squander 12 K on “summer drinks” while telling me I couldn’t have 10 K for journalism, I find myself with a surprise deficit. I expected this. In fact, I expected it to be worse. It’s why my response to the bailouts was oh, fuck you, you won’t bail out NOLA or the auto companies or the pressmen’s union but you’ll bail out these dickheads, don’t they have some bling they could sell?
It’s nice that you’re going to replace Liddy as the most hated man in America for the next ten minutes, Chris, and while we’re talking, don’t open your mouth about anything of consequence to Wolf Blitzer ever again. You’ll only frighten the poor dear.
Also, as long as we’re castigating people in public who wrote shitty memos that cost us lots of money, Doug Feith continues to be employed, and his memos had the added special bonus of making lots of people DEAD, so don’t come at me all, “WHAR IS UR GOD NOW” because you cannot pay me to care.
A.
Your writing is so fucking good, you are scary.
WTF was he thinking? Seriously? To deny it, then come back and say, oh, yeah, that was me, but only because the administration wanted me to? Chris, dear, I love you, I gave you money, but DAMN that wasn’t kewl. Not at all.
Name the fucker. Seriously. I know, it’s the Obama administration now, not the Bush one, but don’t let these fuckers play these games. They wanted it done, tell us who did it. Then tell us why – cuz I have a sinking suspicion it was either Timmeh for his buddies, or it was to try to get some token Republicans on board, and if you haven’t fucking learned THAT lesson yet?
A, you’re right. I expected this shit. We keep bailing them out, they aren’t going to change, cuz they don’t HAVE to change. Moral fucking hazard my dying ass. We need to GIVE them some fucking hazard, but I fear that Marcy Wheeler has it right, and we simply are being forced to negotiate with terrorists.
Fuck.
The democrats, doing everything they can to prove the greenshirts right.
(sigh)
When will the Dems learn? For FSM sake, name the toady who wanted the changes and deal with the fall out.
Fuck.
Sen. Wyden named names.
FoxNews: “Though lawmakers are now trying to recoup some of the $165 million in bonuses through taxation, Wyden and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, had included a provision to tax executive bonuses at 35 percent in the stimulus — it was later stripped. Asked to whom he spoke with back in February when he was fighting to keep the item, Wyden said, “Secretary Geithner, Larry Summers, and I’ll leave it at that.”
That’s a clean hit by Wyden. Nothing personal, just business. Dodd’s response was the worst of both worlds, CYA without the courage to back it up. Sen. Wyden is going to get heat for that but at least he didn’t zing President Obama with a blunderbuss response like Sen. Dodd. Geithner and Summers are insider corporate a-holes but if President Obama believes that’s what is needed he should be defending their a-hole skills, not painting them as shiny white knights, which they sure as heck are not.
The media is piling the shit on Dodd deeper, too.
I’m torn about the “hey, we knew they would steal” idea. We knew it, but it’s still the responsibility of the companies for stealing so openly. Sure, it’s fair to call the administration on their part, but the companies are the ones that should bear the legal responsibility for the abuse.
Because if we go with “we shouldn’t have given it to them because they would steal” then we have to go with a lot of other stuff too, like “it’s okay that we aren’t going to prosecute Bushco because they’ll just get off.”
In fact, I expected it to be worse.
Who says it isn’t? Most likely, the executive bonus thing is just the tip of a giant iceberg of malfeasance.
I have a hope that both civil and criminal legal proceedings are possible based on the USA govt being the majority shareholder and /or the hiding of hastily written contracts was, in effect, fraud.
Of course, I believe in Tinkerbell too.
Come on now, it isn’t like we are giving away real money now. We taxpayers long ago quit financing our own government. What is being given away now is “money” being printed up by the Fed to give away. Today’s news included an item that the Fed is now printing another $1.5 trillion to hand out to the banking corporations.
Just for kicks, try to imagine $1 trillion. I’m betting you can’t do it. That makes $1,000,000 look like the corroded penny you see on the sidewalk but don’t bother looking twice, let alone actually picking it up. Remember when being a millionaire was something to strive for?
The lesson I learned so far today, and the day is still young, is that “money” is just good quality paper, with nice engravings on it. What the Fed is doing doesn’t even include printing those nice pieces of paper, they just type a “$1”, then let their fourth finger on their right hand rest on the zero key while drinking a Starbucks latte. Then, they hit the send key, and, lo and behold, another banking corporation can pay more bonuses!
I think I finally have the gist of economics.
virgo, it’s not so much that I don’t want to see them punished, it’s that I don’t want to fall down the hole of being shocked and “nobody could have predicted” when in truth many many people could have predicted, and did, and weren’t listened to, and now are coming to us all, “AREN’T YOU SHOCKED BY THIS UNPRECEDENTED HORROR?!1!” and no, I’m not.
I didn’t mean for it to sound like I was advocating cynicism, just not faux-surprise.
A.
i hear it was geitner who did it, not dodd.
either way, can we have some TOUGH love now??? funny the reaglikkkans who made this all possible are now whining as hard as democrats.