Friday, September 19, 2008

The Real Pirates

The United States of America is a socialist country, and it wasn't a revolution that led us in to this uncapitalist era. Welcome to the biggest bailout season of all time, and be sure to thank these evil, dark lords of piracy and plundering. They are the villains of this new age, and we have them to thank for being swindled and cheated. They are the CEOs of the big banks, and mortgage companies, the ones we are saving from natural selection, by paying off all of their "bad debt." "Sub-prime crisis" and "bad debt" are the terms they toss around, so that it sounds as though this whole debacle is the fault of families with risky credit, instead of companies with ruthless and unethical lending practices. They say "We're all homeowners now," and it makes me want to retch. We played by the rules. We saved and waited and behaved responsibly, and now they tell us that we are going to rescue the institutions that send away their CEOs with "$7,000,000 for 3 months work..." or how about "$68,000,000 to Charles Prince, after a 57% drop in quarterly earnings just before he left Citicorp?"

I am too angry... it's painful. Isn't piracy a hanging offense?

6 comments:

Chris said...

Amen sistah!

I am linking to this post and spreading the word!!

Tami @ Lemon Tree Tales said...

Yes and the other problem that no one seems to ever address is the practice of loan agents. Here in the state of California they're supposed to have fiduciary responsibility towards their clients (ie the homeowners). For a couple months in between freelance gigs I helped out at a loan office.

Wow! You should have seen what the loan agents did. I didn't see any evidence that they thought at all about what was right for the clients. Yes a lot of homeowners knew what they were getting into, but you'd be surprised by the number of people who listened to the loan agents. Why aren't they getting punished? Oh, yes, I guess in a way they are .. many of the smaller offices have gone out of business.

I have no problem with CEOs getting paid high salaries IF they do their jobs right. But tell me, how is it a good thing that banks took such high risks with the majority of their assets? There's something wrong when century old financial institutions are in danger of going out of business because they suddenly lost sight of the long-term and got sucked into the greed of the short-term. Not good at all.

Em said...

Natalie - I love this post - you are so right... I'm gonna add a link to this on my blog. You don't mind do you?

Frogdancer said...

Over here in Australia we're watching with great interest. And trepidation. Our banking industry is more tightly regulated than yours, so things are tight but not disastrous. Yet.
We're all just worried that if America goes down the gurgler, then willy-nilly we'll be dragged down too, through absolutely no fault of our own. So you aren't the only people hurling curses their way.

jen @ J&J Acres said...

I came over from Chris at Refining Life, and you are so right. CEOs are getting these huge bonuses and then our tax money is spent to get their companies out of debt. What happened to the 'strongest survive'? What happened to a competitive market? Not a 'the government thinks you shouldn't go under, so they'll help you pay off debts.' It's messed up.

Katie said...

I hear you Natalie.

It's like the whole Enron thing a few years back, so riffled with corporate greed and idiocy, but they're repeating it in a different market now!

I stand with you