Public Flogging, Private Fortunes
Last week the CEOs of Countrywide, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch appeared before Congress where a panel "ripped" them for taking home multi-million-dollar fortunes while their companies sowed the seeds of our current, countrywide (heh) economic problems.
Their extravagant pay wasn't literally ripped, like those old shirts you can no longer afford to replace because the market's tanking. It was more just a public admonishment.
Virginia Rep. Tom Davis: "Punishing individual corporate executives with public floggings like this may be a politically satisfying ritual—like an island tribe sacrificing a virgin to a grumbling volcano. But in the end, it won't answer the questions...about corporate responsibility and economic stability."
He's right in part. Public tongue-lashings aren't going to fix vertiginous income disparities or lack of accountability for CEOs. But nothing compares to the political satisfaction of appeasing a grumbling volcano with a virgin.
The story from Reuters.
Posted on March 10, 2008 by - andrewprice
Like this article? Tell the world It's Good!
1 vote
the addicts & small potatoes
It does no good to lecture these people. It might even do damage because the public may be duped into thinking Congress is taking care of business by scolding CEOs. The real scoundrels here are the members of Congress themselves who perpetuate the conditions which set the stage for this present crisis. The government complicit with Fed monetary policy has created economic reward for such behavior, the inherent risk in a healthy market would check the behavior after a short time, but the risk has been distributed to the American taxpayer. It was Congress who allowed changes in policy regarding the securitization (repackaging and distributing risk) of loans. Short term gains are sweet, especially when the American public tastes the bitter long term fruit.
Questions surrounding credit and banking used to be defining issues in elections, but it seems we have forgotten the importance. Andrew Jackson’s tireless battle and ultimately the triumph of his presidency directly relates to these issues. The CEOs and others who take advantage of a manipulated system are not to blame, but those who allow the creation of such a system, the addicts in Congress who need to be weaned from the products of their own ineptitude: short term "solutions", and the debt they've saddled us with. If the members of Congress are addicts, the Fed is the dealer and CEOs are small potatoes. Let's educate ourselves not only about political history but also the economic history driving it.
Posted on March 12, 2008 — by acc
0 comments