Stephen’s Personal Blog

Mr Paulson’s last job, which he left in 2005, was CEO of Goldman Sachs. This is one of the companies to be bailed out. Paulson is one of the CEOs who ran the financial services industry in to the ground. His own net worth is $700m. Should he be responsible for spending the public money in an unlimited way to remove the consequences of his own and his peers’ actions?

This rescue of people who have lots of money will create a crisis for people who do not. There will be no bailout for them. For example, the home mortgage “crisis” has ignored the vast majority of individuals with homes and focused strongly on corporations who encouraged and profitted for the irresponsible spending and loaning.

Is it funny that the words used to describe these financial issues are so non-financial? When I bought my house the contracts were thick and the language dense. Yet the homes loans are a poison to these companies. Poison? Really? It restates the issue to ignore as much as possible the fact that these corporations made their own decisions which led to their bankruptcy. There is no poison or toxin or accident here. There is mismanagement, irresponsibility, incompetence, stupidity,..

One last thing oddity. Freaky really. Tivo caught Bob Schieffer interviewing Barney Frank and a Republic congressman. And the Republican droned on and on about how this financial crisis was all due to lack of regulation, we need more regulation, these companies have been running wild. Hasn’t the Republican theme song for 20+ years been, we don’t need no stinking regulation, regulations are big government – not us, and free market rulz. Who lobotomized this congressman? What did they do with the real Republicans? At least admit your prior position was the opposite of today’s position. Take ownership and responsibility. Be accountable, another Republican truism. And step down en masse. Fire yourself. This goes for Democrats without whose votes the removal of regulations would not have taken place..

AIG, Freddie Mac, Fanny Mae have all been bailed out in the past 3 weeks. How much have their CEOs made in the past three years for performance that should have destroyed their companies. Neither Freddie or Fanny CEOs still hold that position. So, I listed the severance packages.

If we took the salaries of board members, CEOs, VPs of the companies purchased or rescued by the Federal government could we get $.5b to $1b from 100 or so responsible individuals of the estimated $1t that we will pay out.

The Federal Gov lately has seen fit, on top of funding an expensive “war”, to take on the debt of several industries at the same time. This probably won’t end with Real Estate. Everything is borrowed and has been for at least a decade, if not two or three. These numbers are so astronomical as to not seem real.

Does anyone think we can continue this indefinately?

If we can not, don’t we risk massive, ie. triple or quadruple digit, inflation when no one will lend the USA any more money?