I have been hearing a lot over the past several weeks about big corporations and how they are screwing the American People by paying bonuses, salaries, buying corporate jets, etc. What I haven’t heard much about is integrity, committment, honor, etc.
Companies don’t operate from the seat of their pants normally speaking. Salaries and bonuses aren’t given willy-nilly at the spur of the moment. Corporate jets are not something you run out and buy on a whim, nor are they purchased just to keep from inconveniencing some executive somewhere.
These things were all negotiated long before anyone even thought that there would ever be the need of a bailout. But here comes Congress acting all big and tough, never having managed a big corporation wanting to tell the people who do how to do it. Slashing expenditures left and right and telling corporations that they had better bail on these committments. Committments which had been made in some cases years before.
How many people worked on, and made their living from building the plane that Congress forced Citigroup to cancel? Are they now going to lose their jobs because the company they work for has lost a $50 million dollar sale?
How is this lost sale going to affect the bottom line of the manufacturer? Many of the employees likely have Citigroup Credit Cards which they may have difficulty paying now that the sale is lost which was negotiated many months ago. Who is going to pay their credit card bills now that Congress has decided that the jobs of people working for Citigroup are more important than those who make airplanes?
The only law that Congress seems to be any good at following is the “Law of Unintended Consequences.” Even good Ol’ Charlie Rangle and our new Treasury Secretary will follow the mandates of this law. Because this is a natural law, they have no choice. When you stick your nose into something that is working like it is supposed to and try to fix something that isn’t broken, this is what happens. Every attempt you make to fix something here pushes something out of whack somewhere else. This is why President Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most dangerous words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help,’” he wasn’t kidding. Anytime government tries to fix something they manage to make it worse. We need to take our medicine, and let the economy fix itself, that is what it does.
But, that is just my Arrogant Opinion.
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