Nashville News Blog

What a bait and switch! The government made this possible by voting for the bailouts, and you want to guillotine the recipients?

For one hundred years, intellectuals have been blaming all the problems they have created with their legislative schemes on their victims. This snark is another example of that.

TO: All
RE: STOP IT!

"Is it time to reinstate the guillotine? " -- Pete Kotz

You're scaring them to death....

"VIENNA, Va. -- The acting chief financial officer of Freddie Mac, David Kellermann, has apparently committed suicide, Fairfax County Police tell WTOP." -- Drudge Report link

Or maybe he's another Vince Foster? Or Ron Brown? Or Airman Womack? Or one of four former Secret Service Security Detail who guarded then-Governor Clinton?

Oh God! Is the body-count business coming back again?

Regards,

Chuck(le)
[History repeats itself. Especially if it was successful the first time.]

It doesn't take an economist to know that spending more money to get out of debt is the pinnacle of stupidity. Particularly when it involves the government giving large sums of money to organizations and projects that give no return to the investment. But hey, we can all feel better knowing we're post-racial (whatever the hell that means) even though there is a man sitting in the White House right now that apparently didn't pass high school economics. Hopechange!

Brett says:
What a bait and switch! The government made this possible by voting for the bailouts, and you want to guillotine the recipients?

Indeed. The tea partiers, by and large, aren't mad at corporations for accepting the bailouts. If you were the CEO of a struggling company and the government wanted to throw a couple billion dollars at you, wouldn't you take it, and then try to get more?

The tea partiers are mad at the government for being so stupid as to give the bailouts to these failing companies to begin with, for rewarding epic failure with boatloads of taxpayer dollars. Members of Congress are the ones that should be worried about the guillotine - the CEOs would merely die of starvation after their money trough ran dry.

While it is easy to get all riled up about the fact that bailout receipents are lobbying the government just take a step back a second and look at it from their angle. Given the move by government to assert ever greater control over the decisions of a business that for whatever reason accepted bailout money - wouldn't it be in their best interest to do what they can to try to mitigate the increasing risk that government wants to impose?

I am not in anyway supportive of government intervention into private enterprise - either through bailouts, subsidies or tax preferences. However at the same time with a government that plans to spend and amount equal to almost 1/3 of the gross domestic product and that has it hands and controls over nearly every facet of business decision making through the myriad of government regulators it seems to me a fully defenseable approach to employ full time lobbyist to attempt to maximize the benefits while minimizing the damage.

If we truly want to stop the special interest from hijacking our liberty and property than it seems to me the better solution is to minimize the role of government in our lives. Just ask yourself this question - how much would a company spend on lobbying the government if all of its spending combined where less than 3% of the GNP and its regulatory reach was limited to one or two areas. It seems to me that a substantially smaller government would be a better cure to the problem than ranting about a logical defensive move by a rational business decision maker.

Just a thought

Remember that some of the financial institutions that were in good shape on their own were nevertheless arm-twisted by the government into taking the TARP money.

Now that the politicians have decided they want to start micromanaging every aspect of all those companies operations, some of those companies want to give the money back.

But it appears that the current administration would rather keep control of those companies than take the money back.

This is about more than bailouts - it's about a government takeover of private industry.

Not that they understand economics any better than we do.

You need to rethink this if you do not understand that spending trillions of taxpayer money in a recession only makes the problem worse. Millions of people understand this, which is why they are protesting the bailout.

A bas Le Guillotine, a la Lanterne.

The truth of the matter you see
The main terror was in the Vendee
They did not get the chop
Instead got the drop
From a lantern or maybe a tree

....nnnn..'o.o'..uu!u....algie
Illegitimi nOn carborundum

Jane - do we have to pick one? Why not do the three at the same time :)

Amen, Dusty! Is there a state sovereignty bill afoot in your state legislature?

Aside from economists and people with brains the size of Oldsmobiles, who among us is smart enough to know if throwing around all that money -- and assuming all that debt -- will actually work?

Let's say a fellow - we'll call him Sam - is in debt for ten thousand dollars, and cannot even keep up with the interest payments. Sam decides that in this moment of crisis, the normal rules of savings and spending no longer apply. He borrows another twenty-five thousand dollars from Li and Ahmed.

Will that solve Sam's financial problems? What will happen to Li and Ahmed if Sam defaults on his loans? What effect will Sam's debts have on his children?

I have neither a degree in economics, nor an Oldsmobile-sized brain. Despite my limitations, the results of Sam's experiment are clear to me. Mr. Kotz thinks he can fool the rubes by pretending the magic word "government" changes the basic rules of finance. No, sir, we are not fooled. The Federal Government is repeating the mistakes of the 1970's, and will get the same dismal results.

Actually I do know economics better than you do - that's why I was at a Tea Party protest. I got a business undergrad and an MBA, followed by a lifelong interest in the field of finance and economics.

Thanks for stepping up to the chopping block.