Mr. President
By Mitch Berg
To: President Barack Obama
From: Mitch Berg – American, Citizen, Accidental Constituent
Re: Geese and Ganders
Mr. President,
As a person with an innate notion of common sense and right and wrong, I don’t disagree that it’s really, really bad PR for Wall Street firms and banks that are asking for government bailouts to be giving out nearly $20 billion in bonuses.
The tongue-lashing you gave them…:
Summoning reporters after a closed meeting with Mr. Geithner, Mr. Obama blasted earlier news that Wall Street had paid out $18.4 billion in bonuses, calling it “the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful.””There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses,” he said. “Now is not that time.”
The tough talk suggested a firmer stand from the administration in its oversight of banks. But it also had a political purpose: eliciting support for an expensive and unpopular bailout program that will likely require more cash from Congress.
…makes political sense.
On the other hand, the bonuses are attempts to retain top “talent” at firms that do drive this nation’s economic engine. Right? Wrong? I’m not sure.
But it’s certainly no worse than the hundreds of millions – billions – your administration is planning to give to ACORN, the National Endowment for the Arts, global warming cultists, unions, and Trojan-brand condoms – none of which brings a single job to this nation (other than, I suppose, at Trojan – although I suppose you know that recessions actually help the market for contraceptives, among other less-clinical goodies).
If I didn’t know better – and as a bitter, gun-clinging Jesus freak, you just know I don’t, right? – I’d almost thing you were trying an FDR-like bit of populist displacement, to focus the people’s attention on these (ill-timed) bonuses via the lens of your friends in tingly-leg media, to drown out questions about the pork your “stimulus” plan is shoveling.
Please get back to me. Thanks.
That is all.
January 30th, 2009 at 10:04 am
“I won.”
January 31st, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Frankly I don’t give a rat’s rear end that Obama is angry with wall street. I want to know what he plans to do about getting the money paid in bonuses BACK.
A mere “scolding” of the banking big boys just doesn’t cut it.
Particularly not in the light of last week’s Moyer’s Journal interviews which highlighted a different Wall Street article to the effect that provisions for the bonuses were built into loop holes in TARP with the deliberate intention of making it possible to pay out bonuses and to ignore or circumvent any kind of bonus caps.
IMHO, the company fails to make money, the employees fail to gain bonuses, much less bonuses that are among the top ten highest ever paid. No bonuses for anyone, top talent or not. If any of the hot shots want to try their employment chances in the current market with someone else, more power to ’em. (I doubt very many would take the risk of leaving any company that is still operational, given how many have failed.)
Simple and to the point.
Here’s a suggestion – instead of buying up toxic waste, er, mortgages, how about we mandate that every damn dime provided to lending institutions has to actually BE LOANED, with a set percentage being provided to smaller and medium sized businesses?
Works for me.