Just Say No
Posted by Wyoh | Filed under Raid Kills Bugs Dead
Vodkaboy has this on Queen Barney’s latest power-grab:
But now, in a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the “Pay for Performance Act of 2009,” would impose government controls on the pay of all employees — not just top executives — of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.
Eye-wateringly presumptuous, no?
As I commented at VP:
So, if we – all of us who retain a functioning forebrain anyway – vow to absolutely refuse to do business with any company that has taken a cent of bailout graft (or otherwise bends a knee to the new Tsars) then presumably said companies will sink in a welter of Fail, causing the economy to correctly adjust and spontaneously right itself. Et voila.
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Anyone know of a comprehensive list of companies who have received bailout funds? That sort of thing needs tracking.
Tags: congressional theft
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March 31st, 2009
Comrade Wyoh, your solution seems to suggest a boycott of the very companies that have in effect already failed in a stupendously colossal fashion. Our reticence to do business with them only allows them further justification for forcible confiscation of our dollars. The solution I think is more with Prof’s sustainable farm friends, where our prosperity is less subject to the whims of bureaucrats. Free Luna!
March 31st, 2009
I just see no other option to fully and completely express my extreme displeasure, and try and finish the job a functioning capitalist society would have already done, in short, completely lunch the companies in question.
Sustainable farming/bartering/whathaveyou amounts to the same thing, does it not? With the notable exception of our automobiles… If I were to give up my car, then getting the kids to school would be problematic, as would picking up the grocery items we are incapable of producing ourselves (meat, milk, eggs, paper products). Yes, I would dearly love to become as self-sufficient as possible, and we work towards that every day, but with the torpedoing of the housing market, there is no way we could sell our current house (in a subdivision) just now and acquire land. Ergo, boycott, failure, and hopefully, some measure of market correction.
March 31st, 2009
A very valid point. The trouble is in the current landscape corporate failure has become justification for power grabs and increased government intervention. Each passing day brings a new unintended consequence of the initial bailout, with hir majesty’s current proposal (see above) the latest outrage. In that environment, the choice to torpedo the complicit firms serves to sate our need for retribution, while allowing the true targets of our ire to seize more power. The solution, which we are incapable of executing is a tax revolt. But how do we achieve what our overlords have accomplished, which is not paying taxes without facing penalties.
Removing taxes is the surest means of shrinking government, not destroying companies that in some cases were bullied by the government to take the TARP relief they did not necessarily need.
The idea of moving to companies that have not is nice, except what stops our small town, local bank that hasn’t taken TARP funds from, approaching a TARP funded enterprise to sell leveraged securities to? Effectively nothing, therefore, inadvertently, our boycott has been subverted by the partner we trusted to be above board.
March 31st, 2009
@Joe:
Yes, we’re BONED, we know. But we have to do something.
March 31st, 2009
We could always throw rocks at them
Permit me an aside, I love the site and the discussion that I’m sure will follow. I only add my chorus of contrarian thoughts to the mix as I see fit.
That said, we are definitely hosed, and it shows no signs of improving and rather than picking a something to do, I want to find the right thing to do. But yeah, I concede and agree, we need to do something.
March 31st, 2009
One potentially important thing to bear in mind is that a large number of these corporations were forced to take the TARP funds, in addition to other governmental “bailout” monies. Yes, there is some debate as to how much someone can be “forced” to do anything, especially in Heinleinian universes, but when the option is either taking the money, or having one’s working relationship with the government “reconsidered”, there is still a choice, but it is a difficult one to make.
They took the money, no doubt, but one must be careful not to bite off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
As for the list of banks and such who received the money in question, I think either this or this should cover it.
April 1st, 2009
Wow… went to that WSJ list of banks that took the money… that’s a depressingly large list.