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End Culture of Corporate Entitlement
I don't mind losing when we lose, but I hate losing when we win.
One big reason that Barack Obama now occupies the big chair in the Oval Office is that he embraced the public's rising indignation at the blatant greed of Wall Street bankers, striking the proper populist tone in last year's presidential election.
After all, these slick financial elites crashed our economy, yet they kept enriching and pampering themselves, even as taxpayers were being forced to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at their failing institutions.
Having won and taken office, Obama proceeded to rip right into the bankers' shameless avarice, denouncing their "culture of narrow self-interest and short-term gain at the expense of everything else."
Great stuff! Go get 'em, Barack!
A week later, however, the president's treasury chief, Timothy Geithner, rolled out the administration's plan to add more than a trillion dollars to the ongoing Wall Street bailout, and -- Holy William Jennings Bryan -- Obama's populist bark had been reduced to a puppy whimper!
It seems that Geithner and Obama's top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers -- both of whom have long been cozy with the very same greed-headed bankers who caused the financial mess we're in -- had been cooing into the president's ears about the "danger" of "harshly" punishing executives and "spooking" private investors.
Thanks to them, even though populist politics won, populist policy lost.
Gone from Obama's proposal is the idea that top managers of the failed banks -- the executives who made the foolhardy investments that brought the system down -- should be ousted (if not tarred and feathered).
Instead, our trillion-plus bucks are to be put right into those same hands! If ignorance is bliss, Geithner and Summers must be ecstatic.
The soft-on-Wall Street boys also prevailed over those who pushed to impose strict limits on the pay of top executives whose banks are getting our bailout money.
While Obama's team did put a $500,000 annual cap on cash paid to the CEO, the restriction does not apply to Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and about 350 other banks that've already grabbed bailout funds. It only applies to those taking money in the next phase of the giveaway.
Also, the executives who do fall under the cash cap can receive unlimited bonuses in the form of stock payments.
The worst part of this political cave-in is not in the details, but in the principle that was abandoned. Obama hit it on the head when he denounced "the culture" of executive entitlement that has infested America's corporate world.
In the past couple of decades, the ethical notion that business leaders should be trustees for the enterprise -- with responsibilities to future shareholders, employees and the larger society -- has been displaced by a singular focus on amassing short-term wealth for the few by driving up the stock price, no matter what shortcuts must be taken to achieve that soulless goal.
CEOs who can jack up those prices, by hook or crook, are hailed as geniuses and treated as royalty, no matter how much damage they're doing to their company or our country.
This celebration of manipulated wealth has even fostered an absurd bit of conventional wisdom that we can't get competent executive talent for a mere $500,000 a year.
This stems from the prevailing (and pernicious) corporate fiction that the best are, by definition, the ones who're paid the most. Yet 500K is 25 percent more than our country's president makes, more than our top-rated non-profit leaders receive, more than most community bankers take and way more than America's finest teachers are paid.
Wall Street conveniently equates compensation with value -- and since CEOs compensate themselves extravagantly, they've come to assume that they are America's most valuable people. Indispensable, even.
It is this self-aggrandizing corporate culture that must be changed. Sadly, Geithner, Summers -- and Obama -- have instead advanced that culture by failing to hold some of its worst practitioners accountable for their enormously destructive actions.
- Posted in
53 Comments so far
Show AllWhite collar three strikes-- mandatory sentacing. just like other gangs that steal stereos.
"Wall Street conveniently equates compensation with value -- and since CEOs compensate themselves extravagantly, they've come to assume that they are America's most valuable people. Indispensable, even."
Even more than a nation that believes in the so-called "free market," we are a nation that believes in science. And that means that we believe hypotheses should be tested. So why don't we test the above hypothesis by shoving all the banksters and Wall Street CEOs into some pit, preferably from where they cannot escape or even ever be heard from again (that might corrupt the experiment), and see whether they truly are indispensable.
Or put them on a desert island and see what they can produce of value for themselves, on their own -- or survive -- without the lowly working class such as mechanics, ditch-diggers, and farmers.
I love reading Mr. Hightower's rants!!!! No one can say it better than he does and he has very few equals!
To add on to the two previous posters: Wasn't there a time, and is it still in force, that people arrested for drug deals had EVERYTHING confiscated by the government, because it was all assumed to be used in dealing drugs or was its profits? Same should apply to the banksters! Although, I think we should wait until they are convicted at very public trials first.
Don't hold your breath! Justice works better for some than others.
Ken Lay of Enron was convicted in a public trial by a jury of his peers.
However, while out on bail awaiting his appeal, he died. The presiding judge declared that since Ken Lay was not able to appeal the jury's decision, he was not guilty and his family could keep all the property and mansions they bought with the "allegedly" stolen money. (Too bad for the shareholders and employees who got nothing).
(The single largest corporate contributor to George W. Bush's campaign fund was Enron.)
Sioux Rose
I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Carmel, California, a very expensive little enclave with quite a few art galleries that feature amazing work. There is NO sense of a recession/depression out here. The inns seem full, the streets also crowded although it's cold and rainy; and it was the same way in Big Sur where I stayed last night (celebrating the completion of a very "labor" intensive book).
As I get deeper into Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine," it seems that its blueprint, straight from "The Chicago School" philosophy, is being implemented in our land, step by step, orchestrated crisis by orchestrated crisis. I encourage all my CD friends to read this book as it's quite prophetic and chilling for its morally bankrupt posture.
Nice book. My wife read that book and she thinks we're an amoral society to take Klein seriously. I think we'll need to do some more framing and reframing first to get these people out of their delusions before they can accept the truth.
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota
Sioux Rose, you certainly dont have to travel far from Carmel to see the results of rampant capitalism:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175037/nick_turse_closing_down_main_street
Tough Times in the West
In the West, California dominates the news with a seemingly endless string of stories about the deepening crisis faced by towns (sometimes in that state officially labeled "cities," even with populations of less than 1,000). El Centro, California, for example, boasts an eye-popping 22.6% jobless rate -- and while this is the highest rate in any metropolitan area, it isn't even the worst case in the state.
"We have a major problem to deal with," Mayor Robert Silva of Mendota, California, told local TV station KFSN in January. A month earlier, the "Cantaloupe Capital of the World" (population: 10,000) experienced the greatest spike ever in its unemployment rate. At an astounding 35%, it was clearly in a local Great Depression, whatever the rest of the country was in. In a rich agricultural area, it was also in a great drought as water supplies dwindled, fields were left fallow, and farming jobs dried up. Not surprisingly, with so many out of work, local businesses are suffering. Among the hardest hit are fertilizer and irrigation equipment suppliers as well as trucking companies with nothing to transport. "And, of course, it all trickles down to hairdressing shops, restaurants and other small businesses in town," Sarah Woolf of the Westlands Water District, which provides water to more than 600 family-owned farms in the region, told the San Jose Mercury News. Silva, who also works as a manager at a local store, agrees: "We're down 20% like all business in Mendota. Everybody's down." The fallout from the agricultural crisis has also hit the housing market where, the Wall Street Journal reports, Mendota's home sales "fell to fewer than 10 in the fourth quarter of last year from nearly 100 in the second quarter of 2007; [and] median prices dropped 37% to about $175,000 from a 2006 high of about $275,000…"
Things are only slightly better eight miles north in Firebaugh (population: 5,700), which saw its jobless rate climb to nearly 23%. In that town, too, the crisis is intimately linked to drought conditions across California. "I would call it the perfect storm or compound crisis," said Firebaugh City Manager Jose Ramirez.
In Rio Vista, a town of about 7,000, "plummeting property and sales taxes and building fees due to the housing bust, and a drop in funds from the state" have led to a $900,000 deficit in the local budget, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle. As a result, Rio Vista was forced to lay off four employees and leave 20 already vacant full-time jobs empty, freeze salaries, cut recreation programs, and adopt a four-day work week at city hall. The austerity plan has so far staved off bankruptcy, but the wolves at the town's door didn't have far to travel to find easy prey.
Maria La Ganga of the Los Angeles Times recently reported that Rio Vista's neighbor, tiny Isleton -- a half-square mile town with just 817 residents -- is almost $1 million in the red and fighting to stave off bankruptcy, if not dissolution, due to its seemingly insurmountable debt. "Some people have said, 'Just hand it over to the county and go home,'" said City Manager Bruce Pope. But while Isleton's case is among the worst in the state, it's hardly alone in its fiscal anguish. La Ganga notes:
"Vallejo, 36 miles northwest, filed for bankruptcy protection in May. Watsonville closed all city services except police and fire for two weeks over the holidays. Calexico declared a fiscal emergency… The state's 10 biggest cities are more than a quarter-billion dollars in the red this fiscal year. Next year, San Francisco and Los Angeles predict a combined $1-billion deficit."
I live fairly close to Rio Vista and fish there pretty often, for sale signs everywhere are not a pretty picture....
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
Relax. Obama's giving your state plenty of bailout money and then you'll be blaming Obama for everything as always. Even Arnold was gracious to accept the stimulus money to help the state. When will you learn?
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota
I realise talking to dumbasses is a waste of time...but what the heck does your stupid and off topic rant have to do with the subject at hand or the post in particular?
You it seems will never learn, nothing between the ears sadly. As trolls usually live under bridges tell me how you get the internet down there?
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
Awww, poor "Ardee". A rightwing troll who can't accept help graciously. Tell you what. Move to Louisiana or better yet South Dakota and let's see how far you really can make it. LOSER.
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota
Is it possible that you fail to see how much you embarrass yourself?
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
"This celebration of manipulated wealth has even fostered an absurd bit of conventional wisdom that we can't get competent executive talent for a mere $500,000 a year."
A study showed that the most criminal minds make the best CEO's. It would be lots cheaper to use prison labor.
You da man, Jim ! I try to convince my conservative friends and coworkers about the need to end the culture of corporate entitlement but unfortanately a lot of them froth at the mouth yelling "Corporations are good for you, sir ! Show some patriotism !" Yeah, I used to be like them but grew out of it the hard way. Unfortunately, some are so hooked to it because they still think that they'll be so darn rich and powerful as them CEOs ! Unfortunately, Main Street is still in a war with itself unlike the days before, during, and after the Great Depression. And with radio, tv, and internet to keep people numb and corrupt, we need to learn from George Lakoff the power of framing and reframing or the elites will keep winning no matter how bad it all gets. I'll take that over hoping a 3rd party will rescue us all given the system's immunity from 3rd parties that's currently tough to crack.
Terrance Mitchell
Redfield, South Dakota
I too hate losing when we win. And on the farm bill Commodity Title we lost half of the movement we won, because they didn't support price floors and supply management on the bottom side, to stop the biggest corporate exploitation in the farm bill (below cost gains from the marketplace, the big billions and historically multitrillions, not the subsidy scapegoat of up to millions that merely compensate for similar amounts in losses). We had the movement, but half were uniformed and advocated on the wrong side, in favor of below cost gains, by merely calling for subsidy tinkering (caps or green subsidies). Yes, I hate losing when we win.
Hightower, for one, was a leader on these issues during the farm crisis of the 1980s, where I first saw him in action. He brought the Farm Policy Reform Act out of farm country and across the nation, a renewal of New Deal (nonsubsidy) farm programs. Later it became Harkin-Gephardt, and today it is the Food from Family Farms Act at nffc.net. It's a stimulus where we get wealth from exports. It's not just ending taxpayer funded subsidies and transforming it to the consumer side, because it also ends subsidies on our massive exports, so we make a profit on exports, and help LDC farmers to get higher prices too.
Hightower's Agribusiness Accountability Project was the prototype of our best farm and food organizations today. His Eat your Heart Out remains better than the likes of Omnivore's Dilemma, Corn King and Diet for a Dead Planet. Check out Hightower's former staffer, the late Al Krebs also. IATP plans to publish Krebs last book on the farm bill.
I do not know much about Farming and world economics but I am concerned about our carrying capacity and environmental stress due to overfarming.
I understand that we get a lot of our fertilizers from petrochemicals. What will we do when they are gone? Biodiesel, for example, doesn't make sense to me.
I understand that a pound of meat requires 16 x more fertilizer and energy than a pound of grain. Wow! Are we killing our planet by trying to put a chicken in every pot?
Yea! Tell it like it is.
I agree. $500,000/year is 36 times more than minimum wage and you know those banksters all get huge bonuses that surpass the average teacher's salary.
Do banksters work 36 times harder every day than the average worker? Did the banksters go to school 36 times more years than a high school diploma? That would be, assuming 6 years primary school and 6 secondary, 432 years of schooling. Wow! Those guys are geniuses! Their IQ's must be 36 times that of the average workers (around 100) or about 3600 (even though the top 1% geniuses are only 140+)!
The worst offenders should be outsourced to Third World Countries. Especially the leaders of the biggest banks! Do they know what happens to snakes in such places?
"The worst offenders should be outsourced to Third World Countries. Especially the leaders of the biggest banks! Do they know what happens to snakes in such places?"
Yeah, they become President For Life or King.
There are not, nor will there be, any Sun-Yat Shin, Mao-Tze Deng hard core movers of the lazy, fat-assed slugs in this country. A bloody revolution by the starving masses might change the revolving door Demo-Repug kleptocracy in USA, but the military has been preparing for that. So let's stop with the fantasies. The fat-cats will be secure and protected. The drawbridge is up.
Maybe all you really need is a movement that absorbs the great majority of high-skilled computer hackers. They could change the world, as the banksters and other high-paid vermin are way too lazy and arrogant to bother with learning all the technical details to protect themselves and their assets from a highly sophisticated and coordinated computer attack.
True, but they seem to be employed by Russia and China right now.
Sioux Rose
KIVALS: Good strategy for it will take stealth and creative thinking... I mean instead of a major military armed and maneuvered, "another team" merely used boxed cutters and got very powerful results. OUT OF THE BOX thinking is what is needed.
Put some money in the hands of the people lower interest rates to 4%.
Uh aren't interest rates around 1% now?
Depends on whether you're saving or borrowing.
Were we in Argentina, we'd be banging pots in the streets - time to get out from behind our computers folks and start making some noise! Where is the "progressive" community?
The boycott is a much better tool, and you won't get tased or beat on by murderous cops. thong-girl
Quit paying you credit card payments! You'll get their attention.
Reference to "The Shock Doctrine" and the "Chicago School" of economics/philosophy is apropos. Remind me where Pres. Obama was a Con Law professor and if any of his economic team went or taught there.
If by "Con Law professor," you mean Constitutional Law Professor, it was a con. He gave seminars on the subject.
Amazing how well the media sold that lie.
Obama looks good in his empty suit. Congratulations all of you who thought you'd elected the Messiah. Now comes your own private hell. And we get to share, how sweet.
This mess is still in its opening phase. As soon as the government shuts off the taxpayer bailout spigot, and it will, we'll see the real meltdown. Everything up to now is only delaying the inevitable.
Maybe if the republicans are marginalized, and if the democrats could somehow enact a jobs program like the New Deal, catastrophe could be averted. Yes, these are two very big "if's", but I'm trying to show a little optimism here.
Otherwise the course we'll find ourselves on will be harsh and brutal.
The Reich Wing will demand the privatization of Social Security. That will be their answer, along with more tax cuts for the rich of course. Revolution, or more accurately rioting and disruption in the streets, may well happen. And that'll be when we really see it hitting the fan.
Americans will beg for totalitarianism to protect their lame asses. And even then, the bankers will not be the scapegoats. Immigrants, Muslims, Arabs, and liberals will be blamed by right wing media.
KBR’s Camp Cheney and Camp Gonzales will be opened up as their final solution for the unemployed masses. Work will make them free.
www.davedubya.com
Sioux RoseDAVE: I think you're onto something, but no one wants to talk about that totem. For years I have been telling my accountant NOT to beef up my income on paper so I am eligible for more social security later. I kept telling her I don't think it will exist by the time it's my turn to retire... unless the unscrupulous persons disguised as leaders sell our national parks and ports and high access zones, the only other piggy bank left to raid is social security and they've been drooling over it for years. Again, until CD persons really read Ms. Klein, they will not recognize the depth and breadth to such operations, and how they are like covert chess games utilizing economic systems to attain "check mate." Other nations have modeled how the pressure valves work, and so many changes in law since 911 have basically mirrored the blueprints of those nations that have undergone what Ms. Klein rightfully terms DISASTER capitalism. If one had a checklist, more than half the steps HAVE been instituted in America today. As others have presciently recommended, grow some food friends...
Although Hightower didn't directly mention it, the most bizarre argument in opposition to the Obama administration's efforts to cap executive compensation and bonuses at banking institutions receiving TARP or other federal bail out funds was this: if government caps CEO and other top level management pay, such policies will create a "brain drain", causing our nation's most creative and gifted financial masters of the universe to withdraw their talents from Wall Street, and sell their accumulated experience, wisdom and expertise to competitive banking entities elsewhere, quite possibly outside the United States.
I say, by all means let the invisible hand of the employment marketplace run its course.
Good riddance.
And good luck selling your exotic, toxic debt-backed securities packaging skills to international investors a second time around, now that the whole global financial system has been infected by your work product, with the label "Made in America" so prominently displayed.
Bill from Saginaw
There will be no mass uprising.
If the boss class scumbags are to be taken down, it will be accomplished by a few people doing what needs to be done.
Who is going to jail for this criminal conspiracy which has brought down the world's economy?
You won't even hear that question hinted, suggested or asked on any "news" program.
Until we can get some action on this central question no true recovery will take place.
Just imagine, TRILLIONS of dollars stolen in what is plainly an orchestrated crime starting at your corner bank and leading all the way to Wall Street and no one is even ASKING who is going to jail!
Just incredible.
The 10% of the American population has successfully robbed the country of all the wealth.
Naomi Klein author of "The Shock Doctrine- The rise of Disaster Capitalism" .
Brilliant book, dead on. A must read for all Americans.
Sioux Rose
BORN FREE: I am about half-way through the text and the parallels with the willful bankrupcy of OUR country makes me wonder if the Chicago School has not fulfilled its dream to turn America into its next target.
The author is quite correct when he says...
"One big reason that Barack Obama now occupies the big chair in the Oval Office is that he embraced the public's rising indignation at the blatant greed of Wall Street bankers..."
Another reason Obama also won was because he also accepted huge donations from these same bankers as well as lots of corporate donations. Keep in mind that in the American election process, a candidate cannot be 'endorsed' if corporate America finds the candidate leaning towards the public interest. If a candidate utters such unspeakables like "universal, government funded healthcare" or "Let's reduce the size of the military!" the MSM will be instructed to marginalize or ignore the candidate while labelling that candidate as a 'lefty' or a 'socialist'.
It should come as no surprise to the well informed that Obama will not tackle the three darlings of big business... the medical, military and prison industrial complexes.
An author wrote recently that all of the big gains in the last 100 years have been a result of Democrats in office. I agree with the author however the Democrats of yesteryear were not a pawn of big business to the extent that they are today. While differences do exist between the parties, this is more a reflection of competing corporate interests rather than public versus private interests.
Obama's choice of Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Joe Biden and Hilary Clinton was at the request of his Wall Street backers. This is not the president who will put an end to Washington's corporate fealty.
Sick !! sick!! sick!! so was Rome before it fell “ Systemic Greed and Debauchery
Me thinks O bama can do but little !!!! Let the people eat cake
Only the people can cleanse the place!!!
Roll out the Guillotines and the public viewings stands ,knitting needles to the ready that will solve it
"Me thinks O bama can do but little !!!!"
Perhaps, but at least he could try. It now becomes clear that all those conservative appointments weren't just for the sake of "bipartisanship". Government exists to protect and abet the interests of the top %10 or so. Doesn't look like that's going to change an iota.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guardians, watch the watchers, etc?)
If only it were so.
Sioux Rose
SPACE CADET: Right on post!
Bill Walz
The American coroporate culture has not promoted the best and the brightest, just the slickest and the greediest. These are the defacto string pullers of our society, which is why we are in such a mess. The bankers who created a completely unstable banking industry just so that they could personally rake in millions, the auto execs who ruined the marquis brand names of American autos so they could rake in their millions, the Wall Street manipulators with their "greed is good" culture, the pharmeceutical and insurance bandits who have turned the right of medical care into an outrageously expensive for-profit commodity, all slapping each other on the backs, living like pre-revolution French aristocracy have got to go. I don't know how or who will create a smart and fair economy for us, but I know it isn't these people. I say, "Off with their heads". We need to steer toward a more balanced European style society where private enterprise is held accountable to social responsibility. This American style capitalism has got to go. Obama, you have one hell of a mess on your hands. It's going to take real courage and brilliant innovation to pull our butts out of the fire, but I believe you have it in you. Tell the Republicans to go suck eggs, they have not a single useful idea.
Love ya Texas Jim.
Jim Hightower...once again you've stated, most accurately, the gest of what ailes(sp)America......The lust for the Legal Tender.
Go Jim Go ! ! !
Pissed-Off in Texas
I hear the following argument over and over again: Obama needed corporate backing to get elected. Therefore, he belongs to the corporations and will not be able to change the big-business culture of Washington.
You don't have to be a logician to see several problems with this line of reasoning.
Right off the bat, we can see that this constant denial of change is a sure sign that change is happening. If no change were occurring, we wouldn't have people coming in to remind us that no change is occurring every five seconds! It's a "Methinks the lady doth protest too much" situation.
The records of the two parties are starkly different. It only takes a moment to notice this. So even if the corporations are buying both parties, they seem to buy different things from their two clients.
Note also that the proportion of money donated to the respective parties is usually weighted in favor of the Repubs to an absurd extent. The Pubs often get from five to ten times as much corporate money as the Democrats, suggesting the corporations see a significant difference between the parties, even if we don't.
People who think Obama is 100% corporate also forget that Obama's election depended just as much on a massive popular groundswell as it did on the corporate fatcats. If Obama doesn't deliver the goods, the voters will take him down no matter what the corporations do.
Reiterating something we all know--that Obama got heavy corporate backing--does really indicate that no change is occurring. The sheer number of repetitions of this argument reveal its essential weakness.
Myst:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_3wJzkxmBQ
Well... If I read this correctly your position is that growing criticism indicate no criticism should be made....Sorry but I fail to follow this logic.
As to the amount of monies received by the respective parties your information is pretty out of date. Ever since Bill Clinton empowered the DLC to close the gap between the two parties with respect to corporate donations we have seen that gap narrowed. In this election the Democrats actually receive more corporate contributions than did the GOP from such as the Insurance industry and the Health Care guys too....
Once I felt that there was a great distinction between the two parties as well, and once there was in fact. Today the distinctions are more cosmetic than concrete, of course they are there to some small degree or other but the destination remains the same.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell
You know what really ticked me off the other day - hearing Obama warning the mayors that he will "call them out" if they waste the money from his massive economic stimulus plan.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/02/20/national/w073410S61.DTL
Here's a little excerpt of that:
"The American people are watching," Obama told a gathering of mayors at the White House. "They need this plan to work. They expect to see the money that they've earned — they've worked so hard to earn — spent in its intended purposes without waste, without inefficiency, without fraud."
Does anyone else find the concept of shaking a finger at the Mayors of this country a little small when compared to the Wall Street CEO's? I do, and if I were a Mayor or Governor, I'd be a tad bit pissed, and that's is putting it mildly.
www.oldelmtree.com
Did you see the congressional panel essentially doing the same thing to the car guys? As if, by simply humiliating them, then giving them billions, would satisfy their constituents. Instead of asking intuitive questions about their business, they were more focused on belittling them. Not that I'm a fan of these guys, but Congress' approval ratings are well deserved at around 10%. What a bunch of losers.
thong-girl
My main reason for supporting the nationalization of banks is that it would take those CEOs and their executive teams out of the loop for decisions. We are being reminded constantly that we are giving bail out money in most cases to the one and the same people that created this economic collapse. Their driving motive behind all of those toxic loans was greed. So they are really not acting out of character when they are given bail out money and assign themselves bonuses, purchase spas, go on expensive hunting trips, arrange conferences at plush Las Vegas hotels, or plan to purchase a new private jet with luxury accommodations.
Then we have just learned that AIG, one of the first corporations we bailed out, has either not changed what they were doing wrong in creating toxic loans to accumulate another $50 billion in debt or were not honest in their first statement of their debt. Whether it is adding to the already huge amount of toxic loans or the lack of honesty and transparency, I am totally underwhelmed with that executive team.
My guess would be they have been manipulating information. That is a common practice with shareholders, and now they are simply doing the same thing with the federal government. Business as usual. Which is exactly what needs to change. How about PRISON TIME for anything short of total transparency?
I think it is overdue that real accountability be set up with very aggressive oversight and punishment.
Jim Hightower is a nice guy, and an entertaining speaker. He was the guy who coined the phrase about Bush Sr. and the fact that he was born on third base and thought he hit a triple, or something like that. However, he's a Democrat and he can be found hanging with guys like his buddy, former cocaine dealer, now corporate lobbyist enabler Mark McKinnon, so where does he get off picking and choosing between criminals? Obama told us what he was going to do and like a good, corrupt, Democrat, he is following the "corporate" line.
thong-girl