After having read yesterday what I think to be the most ignorant, puerile, and intellectually-limited comment that I've ever read in The SGA (by what I take to be a
libertarian pothead writing without the encumbrance of the thought process) on this very subject I thought that it might behoove everyone to read Michael Reagan's latest article regarding the so-called financial crisis and just exactly where the blame really lies. Specifically that some parts of AIG (and by extension private business at large) is NOT the bad guy here.
It might also behoove some of these same folk to educate themselves on the (also so-called) Fair Housing Act of 1968 along with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 since Reagan did not mention these Congressional acts in his article. The results of these bills coupled with the backing of the immensely corrupt, quasi-governmental entities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which I've railed against often here) are what we taxpayers will have to bail-out for decades to come (not to mention The ONE's staggering 1.75 TRILLION dollar budget proposal which we'll be paying for over generations).
And, as I know all-too-well, the
libertarians potheads can become extraordinarily indignant when I lay blame for something on The ONE; I should also point out that officials and cabinet members in his administration (along with their
Democrat godless socialist friends in Congress) have more ties to Fannie and Freddie than anyone in former Pres. Bush's administration ever had by comparison.
You might also want to look up the Jake DeSantis' resignation letter mentioned in this article...it too is worth reading.
This is an excerpt from an article on Townhall.com, as usual, all emphasis is my own:
Don't Get Angry, Get Even
Michael Reagan
Thursday, March 26, 2009
When the members of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis) wanted to use anger as a political weapon they burned the Reichstag and blamed it on the Communists.
It's an old tactic -- when you are in trouble, create a crisis and then create a straw man to blame for the crisis. We are now seeing it played out as a giant insurance company, AIG, is given the role of straw man.
It's working. I'm mad, you're mad, and our anger over the mess created by Washington politicians and their Wall Street buddies is now being diverted away from Capitol Hill and toward AIG and a handful of executives, some of whom got huge bonuses as their company was being bailed out by the federal government.
In the entire furor, nobody has bothered to ask for the details behind the bonuses, such as why were they given to some AIG employees and whether they were legitimate and deserved.
One of them, Jake DeSantis, who like AIG's CEO Edward Liddy has been donating his services for the princely sum of one dollar a year, sent a letter of resignation to Liddy which was published as an editorial in The New York Times Wednesday.
DeSantis explained what he had done to earn his nearly $800,000 bonus. "Like you [liddy], I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down."
He might have added that he is now being rewarded by having members of Congress -- the body largely responsible for the financial crisis -- aim the public's anger not at Congress itself, where it belongs, but at him and his fellow AIG employees.
Noting that AIG's equity and commodity units which he headed were consistently profitable, generating net profits of well over $100 million, DeSantis wrote, "during the dismantling of AIG-FP, I was an integral player in the pending sale of its well-regarded commodity index business to UBS. As you know, business unit sales like this are crucial to AIG's effort to repay the American taxpayer.
"The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation," he wrote, adding that he was donating his entire bonus -- nearly $800,000 -- "to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn."
That's the side of the story the media and the sanctimonious members of Congress haven't bothered to tell the American people because they don't dare. If they did the anger might be directed at them, where the blame lies.
Congressmen have a tendency to react, and we, unfortunately, tend to over-react with them because that's what we do when we are mad. The problem with anger is when you are mad you make terrible decisions.
When you are angry at your children you say and do things you'd never do or say when you aren't mad. Ditto with your spouse. The fact is, you can't make sensible decisions when you are on fire.
That's what's going on here. You have a government and a slavishly subservient media pointing the finger of blame at AIG. As a result, spurred on by duplicitous members of Congress and their media stooges, you are enraged at AIG and their bonus recipients such as Jake DeSantis, and not at such miscreants as Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank, who were among the real villains behind the financial meltdown.
Lost in the shuffle is the fact that it was Dodd who wrote the legislation that required AIG to pay the disputed bonuses in the first place.
As a result of your anger, you are willing to allow Dodd and Frank and their congressional colleagues and President Obama to burn down AIG and slander some of their executives when the blame lies elsewhere, on Capitol Hill and at the White House.
...
The rest of the story:
http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=6009c2e2-a541-46f4-847d-f5948ebfbc64&t=c
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