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Obama & the Private Sector; -(formerly the AiG thread)
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Topic Started: Mar 16 2009, 07:52 PM (615 Views)
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noone3
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Mar 16 2009, 07:52 PM
Post #1
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Desperately Seeking Clarity
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Feel free to put this in with the obama thread if you so desire but i thought this was a topic that merited it's own separate discussion.
Obama will try to block executive bonuses.
The contracts were written pre-bailout so to the best of my knowledge AIG has no choice but to honor those contracts. What is Obama going to do? Furthermore, are we going to start saying what everyone should be paid? I think this is just posturing on his part because if he tries to block the bonuses the employees of AIG can sue their company and the U.S. government.
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flea dip
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Mar 17 2009, 11:50 PM
Post #2
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Rock Star From Mars
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Sure, we can keep this as a separate thread - maybe merge it later, when the story has died down?
Washington knew AIG was preparing to pay bonuses- WASHINGTON – Cue the outrage. For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn't until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back.
Editorial: The Kabuki Theater of AIG Outrage - All the world's a stage, wrote Shakespeare, and in the world of Washington, the curtains have opened on the most elaborate farce of the year.
Welcome, taxpayers, to the Kabuki Theater of AIG Outrage -- where D.C.'s histrionic enablers of taxpayer-funded corporate bailouts compete for Best Performance of Hypocritical Indignation.
Over the weekend, cloaked in their finest populist costumes, the Beltway's hair-sprayed and powdered politicians and White House aides took to the airwaves to inveigh against $165 million in employee retention payments made by the government-backed insurance giant.
Those bennies were reportedly part of a larger $450 million round of bonuses. After subpoenaing AIG, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo informed Congress that 73 employees in the very division responsible for the financial meltdown received bonuses of $1 million or more -- 11 of whom left the company after getting the cash to retain them.
The checks were mailed Friday, but the March 15 bonus deadline had been on the Capitol Hill radar screen since December -- when Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings released a letter to AIG CEO Edward Liddy that noted:
"Without taxpayer intervention, AIG would have ceased to exist and, to be blunt, all of its employees would have lost their jobs.
Against this background -- and given the massive layoffs occurring at other major financial entities, such as Citibank -- the American taxpayers have a right to know why senior executives at AIG, who are frankly lucky to still have jobs, need to receive additional bonus payments of any kind to retain them at AIG."
But it wasn't until last week that the hapless court jester of the Obama administration, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, scrambled to rein in the payments.
Liddy basically told him to buzz off.
Geithner, the primary architect of the original $85 billion AIG bailout last fall, "reluctantly" approved the bonuses anyway. And now his outraged boss has ordered him to scour every legal nook and cranny possible to get the money back.
Spare me President Obama's finger wag. He's "outraged"? Meh.
Two weeks ago, Team Obama forked over another $30 billion for the basket-case company after it reported $61.7 billion in fourth-quarter losses.
That's on top of the first $85 billion round and the second $38 billion round under Bush -- both of which Obama supported.
(Obama, by the way, collected more than $101,000 in AIG campaign contributions.)
Don't talk to me about how the Obama administration opposes rewarding failure.
And don't talk to me about all the politicians stampeding to tax AIG's bonuses.
Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, the corporate crony who is the largest recipient of AIG donations, is now leading the charge to tax the retention payments in order to recoup the $450 million the company is paying to employees in its financial products unit.
But Dodd, it turns out, was for protecting AIG's bonuses before he was against them.
Fox Business reporter Rich Edson pointed out that during the Senate porkulus negotiations last month, Dodd successfully inserted a teeny-tiny amendment that provided for an "'exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009,' which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are seeking to tax."
Pay no attention to what his left hand was doing. Dodd's right fist is pounding mightily, mightily for the sake of the taxpayers.
The hypocritical indignation on the Hill is bipartisan.
On his Twitter page last night, GOP Sen. John McCain huffed: "If we hadn't bailed out AIG = no bonuses for greedy execs."
Well, if the GOP presidential candidate had held fast to his opposition to such doomed corporate bailouts in the first place, maybe bailout-palooza wouldn't have spiraled into the gazillion-dollar mess it inevitably became.
McCain asserted in a Twitter interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos Tuesday morning that he "would have never bailed out AIG."
But on Sept. 18, 2008, McCain performed a 24-hour flip-flop and abandoned his principled opposition to the $85 billion AIG bailout, lamenting that the "government was forced" to do it.
Soon after, McCain joined Obama in supporting the $25 billion auto bailout, the first $350 billion banking bailout (TARP I) and his own massive $300 billion mortgage bailout.
If Washington's newfound opponents of rewarding failure want to do taxpayers a favor, how about giving back their automatic pay raises?
How about returning all their AIG donations?
How about taking back all the bailout money to all the failed enterprises, from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to AIG, the automakers and the big banks? Barry? Harry? Nancy? John? Chris? Bueller? Bueller?
Exit stage left. The curtain falls.
Editorial: There Are Fates Worse Than Bonuses - Here's an idea: If you stop nationalizing banks, there will be no need to engage in phony-baloney indignation over bonus payments anymore.
This cockamamie populism in Washington really hit its stride when Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, suggested that AIG execs who earned bonuses should "follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, 'I'm sorry,' and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide."
C'mon. If suicide were a proper penalty for piddling away taxpayer dollars, the National Mall would look just like Jonestown -- after refreshments.
These same senators who voted to nationalize banks with nary a precondition are also, apparently, stupendously talented actors.
After all, most of these senators voted for a bill that contained a provision that specifically protected bonuses that were agreed upon before Feb. 11 in the bank bailout legislation.
It was put there by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who is the chairman of the Banking Committee.
How is it that all those who cast votes on this provision -- because, we imagine, no trustworthy lawmaker would vote for legislation he hadn't examined vigorously -- are threatening a "special" tax to snag AIG bonuses?
It not only is dishonest but also means they, in a breathtaking abuse of power, believe using punitive taxation to appropriate someone's salary is a legitimate function of government.
President Barack Obama, meanwhile, has asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner "to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole," claiming it is all about "fundamental values."
You know what's a super-useful value? A guarantee that contracts entered into by individuals or parties are respected. Or is the state ready to throw that fundamental value out and bend to the will of the angry mob?
Those are only a few of the reasons the insincere contortions of politicians over $165 million are so pathetically transparent. How could a president who threw $700 billion of your money away in a Keynesian spending orgy feign moral indignation over a few bonuses? We now have $11 trillion, in effect, invested in various bailouts -- with $170 billion going directly to AIG.
Grandstanding isn't going to make us "whole" again. Sorry.
AIG has been dreadfully run, obviously, or it wouldn't be a welfare queen. No one will pity it.
Yet making an assumption that every AIG bonus earner is, by default, a numskull, a bad actor or undeserving is also wrongheaded. Don't we want AIG to succeed and get off the government dole? What sort of employee would work for an entity that doesn't honor its contractual obligations? How many valuable employees would walk away from such a company?
Imagine if George W. Bush had dictated unilaterally to General Motors, after it took billions of bailout cash, to cut the salaries of union workers retroactively because their leadership had negotiated sweetheart deals earlier. A line worker makes a pittance compared with an executive, but the principle does not change.
I get the anger. It's real. It's deserved. The public pressure on AIG is wholly understandable. And with the kind of bailout and stimulus money we're throwing around, you can bet this won't be the last time you're upset.
Being upset is one thing. Permitting government to tear up legal contracts and tax away people's entire incomes, though they haven't broken any laws, are precedents we will regret in the end. Maybe even more than the bailouts themselves.
Excerpt from a page at RushLimbaugh.com:- Now these people who are getting the bonuses are being singled out and personally targeted, by the United States Senate.
No equal treatment under the law here! This is just a Stalinist-type, intimidating power grab -- and the whole thing is a game.
It is designed to distract you from the mess that the Democrat Party has created with these bailouts, that they have created with the stimulus bill, that they have created with the omnibus budget.
It's a mess, it is a cacophonic mess, and they have to do something to distract from it so they're going after $165 million when bailouts are totaling over a trillion now, and they are utter failures.
Every one of these bailouts has been a failure. It hasn't accomplished anything. So you have to be distracted.
....All these people getting bonuses are being fired down the road, and everybody's known it for a year.
Everybody knew the payout date of the bonuses and yet there's Barney Frank acting like he didn't know a thing about the details until he got a letter from Andrew Cuomo this morning.
These people are lying through their teeth to you. Members of Congress, the media, the president, they're lying. They're lying through their teeth.
They knew of the payout schedule. They knew about the retention bonuses.
They knew how much and they knew the payout date, and they sit around, they act like innocent bystanders, surprised and shocked, just this past weekend, as though they are learning about this for the first time.
The Real AIG Outrage - WSJ
Excerpts: - President Obama joined yesterday in the clamor of outrage at AIG for paying some $165 million in contractually obligated employee bonuses.
He and the rest of the political class thus neatly deflected attention from the larger outrage, which is the five-month Beltway cover-up over who benefited most from the AIG bailout.
Taxpayers have already put up $173 billion, or more than a thousand times the amount of those bonuses, to fund the government's AIG "rescue."
This federal takeover, never approved by AIG shareholders, uses the firm as a conduit to bail out other institutions.
After months of government stonewalling, on Sunday night AIG officially acknowledged where most of the taxpayer funds have been going.
Since September 16, AIG has sent $120 billion in cash, collateral and other payouts to banks, municipal governments and other derivative counterparties around the world.
This includes at least $20 billion to European banks. The list also includes American charity cases like Goldman Sachs, which received at least $13 billion.
This comes after months of claims by Goldman that all of its AIG bets were adequately hedged and that it needed no "bailout." Why take $13 billion then? This needless cover-up is one reason Americans are getting angrier as they wonder if Washington is lying to them about these bailouts.
....The politicians also prefer to talk about AIG's latest bonus payments because they deflect attention from Washington's failure to supervise AIG.
The Beltway crowd has been selling the story that AIG failed because it operated in a shadowy unregulated world and cleverly exploited gaps among Washington overseers.
Said President Obama yesterday, "This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed." That's true, but Washington doesn't want you to know that various arms of government approved, enabled and encouraged AIG's disastrous bet on the U.S. housing market.
Scott Polakoff, acting director of the Office of Thrift Supervision, told the Senate Banking Committee this month that, contrary to media myth, AIG's infamous Financial Products unit did not slip through the regulatory cracks.
Mr. Polakoff said that the whole of AIG, including this unit, was regulated by his agency and by a "college" of global bureaucrats.
But what about that supposedly rogue AIG operation in London? Wasn't that outside the reach of federal regulators? Mr. Polakoff called it "a false statement" to say that his agency couldn't regulate the London office.
Looting goes far beyond bonuses: AIG doled out payments to a small group of banks, including UBS
Excerpt:- Mar 17, 2009
Outrageous bonuses for top employees are just a small part of AIG's scandalous use of federal bailout money.
It turns out the insurance giant doled out payments to a small group of banks facing huge losses AIG had insured and funneled bailout money to a bank facing a $780 million fine for tax fraud.
AIG revealed this week it forwarded at least $5 billion last fall from its initial $85 billion federal rescue loan to UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, to make good on some deals that had gone bad.
At the time, UBS was facing federal charges in South Florida for allegedly running a massive tax evasion scheme.
The danger and distraction of outrage - Why AIG outrage rings hollow
Sources: Obama learned of AIG bonuses last week
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noone3
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Mar 18 2009, 11:14 AM
Post #3
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Desperately Seeking Clarity
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I'm seeing this as a power grab. If the SCOTUS even allows this it opens the door for the dissolution of any contract by government. Why have a mortgage bailout??? You can just declare the contracts invalid, right?
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flea dip
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Mar 18 2009, 04:15 PM
Post #4
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Rock Star From Mars
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Related story: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Plan To Give Bonuses To Executives
Will an MSM reporter ask this question? -If AIG’s retention bonuses are a problem, why aren’t Freddie Mac’s? Speaking of the contract angle - the AiG CEO (forget his name - is it Liddy??) did not honor contracts when he was working at a previous company years ago, so some people are saying he's a hypocrite for using the "I have to honor the contracts" this time.
I think Congress wants to get around the contract problem by taxing the bonuses 100%.
Congress Invites Court Challenge With AIG Taxation Plan, Lawyers Say
Excerpts:- Lawmakers outraged over the AIG bonuses have told the people who got the money to watch out -- the government will get it back one way or the other, even if it means taxing the heck out of their paychecks.
But legal scholars say Congress will have a tough time defending itself in court if it goes down that road.
Not only would Congress be retroactively meddling with contractual agreements, they say, but it would be passing laws that would essentially target a specific group of employees.
Jonathan Turley, George Washington University law professor, said targeting those employees through taxes would invite a valid court challenge.
"It could well trigger years of litigation," he said. "Just because a company or individual is unpopular does not mean the government can retroactively impose punitive measures against them. ... There's a host of difficult contractual and constitutional and statutory barriers that would have to be overcome by Congress."
Two of those difficulties, lawyers say, lie in Article I of the U.S. Constitution -- a section stating Congress cannot pass any "Bill of Attainder" or "ex post facto" law.
A Bill of Attainder is an act of the legislature that singles out and punishes a group or individual without trial. An ex post facto law retroactively changes the legal consequences of an act.
"It's a Bill of Attainder. It can't be done," Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., told FOX News when asked about proposals in the Senate to tax AIG.
President Obama even warned Wednesday about the possibility of a costly court battle over the $165 million in bonuses.
....Robert Sedgwick, an executive compensation attorney, told FOX News he doubts the government could successfully tax all that money back.
"There'd be a series of constitutional issues in attempting to do it in that way," he said.
Meanwhile, the Connecticut state legislature is dealing with another legal conundrum, as AIG apparently claims it is legally obligated to pay its bonuses because of provisions in the Connecticut Wage Act.
AIG cites Connecticut law because the company's Financial Products division, the embattled unit that is receiving the bulk of the money, is located in the state. Part of the Wage Act states that employees who are improperly denied their wages can recover twice that amount in court.
Connecticut lawmakers slammed AIG for citing the law -- Gov. M. Jodi Rell called it "contemptible" -- but said they would change the act in response. A draft proposal, pushed by House Republican Leader Larry Cafero and other lawmakers, would add provisions exempting companies that receive bailout money.
Cafero spokeswoman Pat O'Neil said they'll try to take up the bill next week, but it's unclear whether it could have any effect on past contracts. He said lawmakers want at least to prevent AIG from using Connecticut law as an excuse for paying bonuses in the future -- since another $230 million in bonuses is in the pipeline for this year, though Liddy has said he will reduce those.
"We want to remove from their quiver this argument that they have no choice but to use Connecticut law against us as justification for this reprehensible behavior," O'Neil said.
Turley said Connecticut, like Washington, would probably have a tough time trying retroactively to apply the new standards to an old AIG contract.
Turley said the AIG employees who received bonuses have every incentive to keep the money by whatever means possible -- even if that means exposing their identities to public scorn in the courtroom.
"Their prospect of gainful employment is virtually nil, so these people are not going to go quietly into the night," Turley said. "These people are already as popular as Ebola. They have little incentive to return a million dollars or more."
Backlash against bonus backlash - Some well thought out defenses of the bonuses and the sanctity of contracts.
Phony outrage to cover their responsibility - ABC News is reporting that negotiators for the House, Senate and the White House stripped out a measure that could have restricted the AIG bonuses. Now that they are a source of public outrage, members of the both parties -- and the White House -- express outrage.
Insurance Commissions Failed to Do Job In AIG's Case
2nd UPDATE: GOP Congressman Calls For Geithner's Resignation
Embattled AIG puts headquarters on sales block
AIG's Liddy: Asked Employees To Return Some Of Bonuses
Does the AIG flap hurt Obama's agenda? -(I sure hope so)
Democrats’ Tacit Approval of AIG Bonuses May Undercut Outrage - The outrage expressed by President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress over $165 million in bonuses paid to American International Group Inc. may be undercut by their tacit approval of the payouts only a month ago.
The $787 billion economic stimulus bill approved by Congress Feb. 13 and signed into law by Obama three days later contains language that effectively authorizes bonus arrangements at companies receiving taxpayer bailouts as long as they were in place before Feb. 11.
The provision, on page 404 of the 407-page law, carves out those arrangements from new restrictions on pay at bailed-out companies that took effect with Obama’s signature.
Now Obama and many of the same lawmakers who voted for the law, such as New York Senator Charles Schumer and Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, are demanding AIG employees surrender their bonuses.
“The fact is that the bill the president [Obama] signed, which protected the AIG bonuses and others, was written behind closed doors by Democratic leaders of the House and Senate,” Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley said in a statement today.
“There was no transparency, so the only way the public will ever know who added the language to protect bailout company bonuses is if someone from the small group of Democrats in the room says so.”
AIG chief worried about safety after death threats
Treasury Learned of AIG Bonuses Earlier Than Claimed
AIG's Liddy: Fed Was Aware Of Bonus Payment Plans
Liveblogging the public flogging: Liddy and the indignant enablers; will returning half of bonuses mollify?
Report: Dodd admits inserting loophole in stimulus for bonuses - Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) looks like he may be facing a fresh political firestorm.
Dodd just admitted on CNN that he inserted a loophole in the stimulus legislation that allowed million-dollar bonuses to insurance giant AIG to go forward – after previously denying any involvement in writing the controversial provision.
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noone3
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Mar 19 2009, 09:37 PM
Post #5
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Desperately Seeking Clarity
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What ticks me off the most about this issue is the phony outrage. How could they have no know AIG had to pay out those bonuses? The contracts were discussed when the bailout was voted on. Obama voted for that bailout. How can he even pretend it's a shock? As usua,l the lemming American Public falls for the B.S. and spews vitriol at the smokescreen. Meanwhile, the fed is printing trillions and AIG is running off with billions.
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flea dip
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Mar 19 2009, 10:04 PM
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Rock Star From Mars
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^I agree. I find the faux outrage amusing though, like watching a circus act.
Bonfire of the Trivialities- In the scheme of things, $165 million is a rounding error. It amounts to less than 1/18,500 of the $3.1 trillion federal budget. It's less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the bailout money given to AIG alone.
Democrats blame each other on AIG bonuses
AIG is Obama's Katrina - by Ken Blackwell
Candidate Barack Obama ran criticizing the former administration, and often invoking Hurricane Katrina as an example of government failure and a failure of leadership.
Well, now President Obama has his own Katrina. The bill that allowed for the AIG bonuses was hastily written.
It was rammed through without discussion or debate. Republicans were systematically excluded from the bill. Not a single Republican was allowed to participate.
When Democrats showed up to the conference committee, they brought the finished conference bill with them and didn't allow Republicans to see it. Then it was posted online in the middle of the night. And the very next day it was passed, almost exclusively on Democrat votes.
President Obama promised he wouldn't sign anything into law until it had been online for five days, so that the American people could read it.
If this had been done, business experts and finance experts would have analyzed the bill, and we could have caught this and stopped it.
But instead, President Obama broke his word. Like so many of his campaign promises he broke his word without a word of apology. Now we're all stuck paying the bill that Barack Obama stuck paying the bill.
And just as former President George Bush had his point man in Katrina, Michael Brown, so President Obama has his point man in Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
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flea dip
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Mar 24 2009, 10:23 PM
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Rock Star From Mars
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Some of the AIG guys are giving their bonuses back.
Top AIG Execs Giving Back More Than $50M in Bonuses
Obama administration seeks powers to shut firms like AIG
AIG's $100G donation to Democrats was unknown to Gov. Paterson, he says- Mar 21, 2009
Gov. Paterson stuck to his guns Saturday, insisting he knew nothing about a $100,000 donation from AIG to the state Democratic Party days before his office helped save the insurance giant.
State Republicans charged the Democrats with stonewalling an investigation into the Aug. 29 donation, uncovered last week by The Associated Press.
GOP in NY demands probe into AIG campaign donation [to Democrats]
Channeling Anger - editorial
Excerpt:- The New York Times reported Sunday that the president "will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation."
Is that the best way to channel our anger so that it will do the most good? Should Congress and the regulatory authorities, which have failed so spectacularly and at every level (and in both parties), be allowed to manage and repair the financial damage they helped cause?
Can they be trusted with even more power to invade private industry, overrule stockholders, and effectively run more and more companies? This is what totalitarian societies do, isn't it?
The answer isn't more laws; it's enforcing the laws already on the books. The solution can be found in proper oversight, not in overlooking transgressions.
Drive to Tax AIG Bonuses Slows
Senators, scholars question plan to tax AIG bonuses
Dodd's stock with voters began dropping before AIG
IRS reportedly scrutinizing aig's tax-strategies unit
Furor Over AIG Bonuses May Affect Dodd
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flea dip
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Apr 3 2009, 11:42 PM
Post #8
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Rock Star From Mars
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Obama recently told GM (General Motors) to fire one of their head cheeses, if GM wants tax payer money. I found that rather creepy.
Concerning that matter, AiG, and related ones...
Obama's Revenge Against GM
Meet Your New HR Directors
Obama Endorses George Soros Plan to Loot America: His Commitments at G 20 Will Cost US Taxpayers Trillions to Fund UN, IMF and World Bank Entities..... -page contains strong language at one point Obama's Revenge Against GM- By James Lewis
Watching Obama is a psychiatrist's delight. Here we have a middle-aged man with no real-world accomplishments, but with truly astonishing grandiosity and a rock-star following that confirms his Jesus Christ Complex at every opportunity.
Obama must have real, ingrained grandiosity, the kind that is anchored deep in the soul.
He goes ‘way beyond the usual high-fallutin' rhetoric from presidential speech writers -- because he has just fired the President and CEO of General Motors, something no previous president, including FDR or JFK, would ever have imagined doing.
We know that Obama has a very conventional mind. I have not heard a single novel or even interesting idea from the man over all the months that I've listened to him.
He clearly has no understanding of classical economics. He doesn't understand, as Bill Clinton did, the real harm and suffering that welfare dependency has inflicted on black people after LBJ's War on Poverty.
He [Obama] does not understand the elementary difference between productive and non-productive investment of scarce resources. He has no conception of the damage inflicted by inflation on the poor, more than even on the rest of the country.
He [Obama] has no real understanding of the dizzying complexities of foreign policy -- nor does his Secretary of State, who was hardly picked for her competence in foreign affairs.
These are not just rank amateurs, they are willfully ignorant amateurs, who also happen to be grandiose narcissists, and who now have free reign over the levers of power in the United States. We are all watching the Titanic steaming full speed ahead right before that diamond-hard iceberg tears off all the steel rivets from her skin. If you're not aghast, you're just not paying attention.
So why did he decide to fire Rick Wagoner, the President and CEO of General Motors?
Was it sound policy? Not likely. But if you think it was, watch the Dow and the economy in the coming months, and then decide.
Was it sound politics? Not likely. The Democrats who are up for election next year are already dancing away from this one just as fast as they can move. That's why they say it was all the White House's doing. Don't look at me! I didn't do it!
(It's up to the GOP and the New Media to hang this one around their necks come election time.)
So why did he do it?
To this completely objective pundit this sure looks like political suicide, and for very simple technological reasons. Obama evidently intends to coerce the car companies into producing "Green" cars for which the technology does not exist. Sorry! But that's reality.
And yet Carol Browner, the Green zealot and now head of the EPA, which just officially declared CO2 to be a poison, is on the "task force" to rejigger the auto industry. So is Steve Rattner, a former New York Times reporter, with everything that implies. Oh, yes, and Tim Geithner will help out when he takes his daily break from saving the financial sector of the United States.
GM's Obamabiles will have to make unavoidable engineering compromises, trading off size, handling, comfort, and crash safety against gas mileage. Americans likely will not buy those cars, even if they are subsidized to do so. And responsible parents should not risk their kids' lives in an undersized death trap anyway. Green fanatics are more than welcome to risk their own lives, of course. (But please leave your kids at home.)
It took a long time for reality to catch up with Bernie Madoff and his suckers. Reality will catch up with Obama a lot faster, because 60 million GOP voters are already looking on with shock and panic. The United States must still have a few million engineers, NASCAR fans and Popular Mechanics readers who still remember their high school physics. So firing Rick Wagoner looks like sure political suicide.
Not for Obama, not at least until 2012. He thinks there's time for everybody to forget it. But for the Democrats in Congress? They are trying to raise campaign cash for the election right now: All of the House and a third of the Senate. Look at socialist Europe to see where our Democrats are going to head, just as fast as their little piggy feet will carry them.
Hmmm... a spectacularly bad decision politically and substantively. One that will haunt Obama and the Democrats for years to come.
So, why did he do it?
After you eliminate all the rational reasons, you're left with the irrational ones.
And what do we know about Obama and his inner circle?
Grandiose. Obsessively hostile toward all the usual demons of the Left. Incapable of thinking ideas that don't follow the Party Line. Ruthless and manipulative. Quite willing for other people to get hurt.
Remember the phrase "What's good for GM?" The one that brings up 389,000,000 Google hits, each hit representing at least one moment in the mind of a human Obot?
I think it is the iconic value of GM -- at least to the brainwashed Left -- that triggered the firing of Rick Wagoner. I don't think it was policy or politics, or even just PR. I think we are seeing Obama's narcissistic personality at play. Rick Wagoner is precisely Obama's fantasy enemy from childhood and adolescence: An old, rich, white guy who runs GM.
Remember Obama's first book title, Dreams from my Father? Well, Rick Wagoner is the nightmare part of those dreams.
Assuming that's true, all you amateur psychoanalysts, it brings us right to the bottom-line question:
What does a true grandiose narcissist do when he begins to fail, openly, visibly and in public, right in front of 300 million people, over and over and over again?
You tell me.
Meet Your New HR Directors
Excerpts:- Barney Frank and his fellow House Democrats appear to be determined to keep passing bills regulating compensation in the House until they hit upon one that Obama and the Senate will line up to support.
,....Two weeks after the People's House went after the A.I.G. bonuses with the ninety per cent tax bill that died on the vine without the support of the Senate or the President, the House has given it another try.
On Wednesday House Democrats, and ten House Republicans caught up in the fervor, sent up another bill to restrict compensation at financial firms, with Barney Frank as its main author.
The new bill is more encompassing and more alarming than the first one. The Library of Congress summary of the bill passed by the house includes these highlights:
* Prohibits payments under pre-existing or new compensation arrangements that are "unreasonable or excessive" according to standards set by the Treasury Secretary, for all employees of companies receiving TARP and other government funds.
* The Secretary must establish standards governing unreasonable or excessive compensation.
* All institutions subject to the bill must report annually how many officers, directors and employees receive total compensation over five specified thresholds, such reports to be posted on the internet, albeit without names [for now].
So the Treasury Secretary will, according to the house legislation, be the arbiter of what is "excessive and unreasonable."
Now, Tim Geithner has a pretty impressive resume, but, as Republican Representative Tom Price of Georgia asks, "What experience does he have in setting compensation?"
Will "excessive and unreasonable" be dependent on the political winds coming from Geithner's boss, or on who Obama is demonizing at the moment?
The passing of the House bill led Republican Representative Spencer Bachus of Alabama to ask: "Would our forefathers ever have considered giving the government a say on how much a private citizen earns, a so-called say on pay?"
The heavy hand of the United States government has crossed the line into the private sector in nationalizing corporations, controlling salaries and replacing executives and directors, not to mention having Obama as the de facto president of General Motors.
Unless we are able to stop this in its tracks, there will be no end to the meddling of Obama, Frank and company, and it will become ever more pernicious, pervasive and oppressive over time.
In the meantime, meet the new HR Director, Mr. Frank, and his new compensation analyst, Mr. Geithner.
Oh, by the way, Mr. Frank will be asking for details of your bank and investment accounts, your energy usage and the size of your home in the next few weeks, and Mr. Geithner will also be examining your tax returns. Both gentlemen are delighted to be on board.
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flea dip
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Apr 6 2009, 12:22 AM
Post #9
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Rock Star From Mars
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Edited to add this even creepier Obama TARP editorial:
Obama Wants to Control the Banks -There's a reason he refuses to accept repayment of TARP money.
Excerpt:- By STUART VARNEY
I must be naive. I really thought the administration would welcome the return of bank bailout money. Some $340 million in TARP cash flowed back this week from four small banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California. This isn't much when we routinely talk in trillions, but clearly that money has not been wasted or otherwise sunk down Wall Street's black hole. So why no cheering as the cash comes back?
My answer: The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell 'em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.
It is not for nothing that rage has been turned on those wicked financiers. The banks are at the core of the administration's thrust: By managing the money, government can steer the whole economy even more firmly down the left fork in the road.
If the banks are forced to keep TARP cash -- which was often forced on them in the first place -- the Obama team can work its will on the financial system to unprecedented degree. That's what's happening right now.
This is getting worse and worse and creepier and creepier (see items above about Obama and GM)!
Treasury chief puts bailed-out bank CEOs on notice
Geithner Says Government Would Remove Bank Chiefs if Needed
US [i.e., Obama Administration] ready to force out bankers: Geithner
Excerpts:- WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US government stands ready to force out banking bosses and install new management if their companies have to return for more bailout money, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Sunday.
Interviewed on CBS program "Face the Nation," Geithner said there were "encouraging signs" for the recession-hit US economy but said "we need to keep acting as forcefully as we can" to get banks lending again.
And he denied the government was trying to evade congressional restrictions on executive compensation, after the Washington Post reported officials were worried that banks could be deterred from coming forward for federal help.
After the US government [Obama administration cronies, ahem] ousted General Motors chief executive Rick Wagoner and demanded deeper restructuring from the embattled carmaker, Geithner was asked if he would take a similar approach to needy bankers.
Geithner May Oust Executives at Banks Needing ‘Exceptional’ Aid - By DAMIAN PALETTA
WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the federal government might remove top bank executives or board members if "exceptional" assistance is required to keep the banks operating in the future.
Excerpts:- By Jesse Westbrook
April 6 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he’s prepared to oust executives and directors at banks that require “exceptional” assistance from the U.S. government.
“If in the future, banks need exceptional assistance in order to get through this, then we will make sure that assistance comes,” while ensuring taxpayers are protected, Geithner said yesterday in an interview on the CBS “Face the Nation” program. “Where that requires a change in management and the board, then we will do that.”
Geithner noted that American International Group Inc., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had their chief executives removed after it became clear the companies couldn’t survive without government rescues. The Treasury is reviewing how much capital the biggest U.S. financial companies need in order to endure a severe economic downturn.
“Where we’ve had to do exceptional things,” the government has replaced management and boards, Geithner said.
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noone3
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Apr 6 2009, 04:16 PM
Post #10
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Desperately Seeking Clarity
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Do not forget he backs a world currency.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economi...hners-slip.html
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flea dip
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Apr 19 2009, 05:12 PM
Post #11
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Rock Star From Mars
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Obama to take aim at credit card abuses- April 19, 2009
By Caren Bohan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama plans to crack down on deceptive credit-card industry practices that have saddled U.S. consumers with huge debts and soaring interest rates, U.S. officials said on Sunday.
Top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers said Obama would be "very focused in the very near term on a whole set of issues having to do with credit card abuses."
"We need to do things to stop the marketing of credit in ways that addict people to it," Summers said in an interview on the NBC television talk show "Meet the Press."
Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, said the administration is concerned about practices that result in consumers being "deceived into paying extraordinarily high rates that they wouldn't have paid if they knew they were getting themselves into."
Summers and other officials are scheduled to meet on Thursday at the White House with top executives of credit card companies.
The meeting comes as lawmakers in the Democratic-led Congress have vented anger that banks with big credit card operations charging high interest rates and fees are the same institutions getting government bailouts from U.S. taxpayers who use these credit cards.
The House of Representatives and Senate are considering a credit card "bill of rights" that would limit the ability of credit card companies to raise interest rates on existing balances and require greater disclosure of terms.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has spoken out against complexity in consumer lending practices that is designed to confuse customers and drive up lending fees.
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May 13 2009, 12:50 AM
Post #12
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Rock Star From Mars
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Two items below.
Story #1- Ex-VP Cheney Frets About Obama's Impact on Business
Excerpt:- Cheney called the current administration’s actions to bail out other sectors of the economy objectionable, and said he worries about the administration’s agenda.
“I worry that the current situation is a set of circumstances where the administration is using the excuse of the economic difficulties in order to significantly broaden the power and authority of the government over the private sector, and I think that’s a…huge mistake,” Cheney said.
Story #2-
Obama administration slashes Chrysler ad budget by 50% - Chrysler is nearly two weeks into its bankruptcy, and the Auburn Hills, Michigan-based automaker is already getting an idea of just how engaged the Obama administration plans to be in the process.
Chrysler planned to spend $134 million dollars on advertising during its supposed nine weeks of bankruptcy, but the Auto Task Force has reportedly cut the figure in half.
Judge Arthur Gonzalez wasn't even sure 50% spending was necessary, saying "idle plants, why market?" But the Task Force apparently says it recognizes that marketing is necessary during the bankruptcy to prevent the further erosion of the already battered Chrysler brand image.
Chrysler Marketing and Sales Vice President Steven Landry defended the decision to spend on advertising during the bankruptcy saying that the move "gives us the opportunity to reinforce that it's business as usual and demonstrate a bright future ahead for Chrysler."
One commenter on Advertising Age took "business as usual" as a bad thing, as that mentality lead to "cars no one wanted to buy, zero innovation, outdated labor practices and a lot of taxpayer money thrown in to keep a sinking ship from going under."
Feds trim Chrysler ad spend - Chrysler's plans to spend $134 million in marketing during the next nine weeks was met with skepticism from the U.S. Treasury's auto industry task force. While the automaker sought to maintain a strong brand image while it goes through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding, the government group felt it could achieve its marketing goals with half the marketing money, according to this article. Advertising Age (05/11)
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flea dip
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May 26 2009, 11:18 PM
Post #13
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Rock Star From Mars
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A story is starting to leak that only car dealerships that did not donate to Obama are being closed, while ones that did donate to Obama are being permitted to remain open:
Shock! Big Dem Donor Group Allowed to Keep Their 6 Chrysler Dealerships Open ...Update: Their Local Competitors Eliminated!!- Are we looking at the biggest political scandal since Watergate?
Big Dem Donor Group allowed to keep all 6 Chrysler dealerships open.... Local competitors eliminated by Obama's task force!!
Earlier it was reported that the Obama Administration may have targeted GOP donors in deciding which Chrysler dealerships would have to close their doors.
Now there's this... RLJ-McLarty-Landers is owned by three men.
One was the former Chief of Staff for President Clinton.
One is the founder of Black Entertainment Television and a huge Obama supporter. All 6 of their Chrysler dealerships will remain open.
And, get this... Their local competitors have been eliminated!
Joey Smith reported tonight that a Democratic donor group in the Midwest and South will not have to close any of their Chrysler dealerships:
The company is called RLJ-McLarty-Landers, and it operates six Chrysler dealerships throughout the South. All six dealerships are safe from closing. The dealer locations are:
Bentonville, AR (northwest Arkansas) Lee's Summit, MO (south of Kansas City, MO) Branson, MO Olathe, KS (near Kansas City) Bossier City, LA (near Shreveport) Huntsville, AL
The interesting part is who the three main owners of the company are. The owners are Steve Landers (long-time car dealer, 4th-generation dealer), Thomas "Mack" McLarty (former Chief of Staff for President Clinton), and Robert Johnson (founder of Black Entertainment Television and co-owner of the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats). Landers has given money to Republicans in the past, but McLarty campaigned for Obama in 2008, and Johnson has given countless amounts of money to Democrats over the years.
More... The decision to close the dealerships was made by Obama officials and not Chrysler.
Doug Ross first reported on this scandal and has several updates.
Previously: Hope, Change & Marxism: Did Obama Target GOP Donors In Chrysler Dealer Closings? (Video)
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flea dip
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May 27 2009, 05:14 PM
Post #14
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Rock Star From Mars
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^See the post directly above, too.
More evidence emerges that Chrysler Dealer closings was politically motivated- by Rick Moran
I wrote yesterday of the possibility that Chrysler dealers who had been given the ax were disproportionately Republican - many of them large contributors to GOP candidates and the RNC.
Now comes more evidence that these dealer closings were politically motivated. Through Reliapundit at Astute Bloggers, we learn that the lawyer for the dealers being torpedoed believes that the closings were ordered not by Chrysler, but by the White House: (via Reuters )
A lawyer for Chrysler dealers facing closure as part of the automaker's bankruptcy reorganization said on Tuesday he believes Chrysler executives do not support a plan to eliminate a quarter of its retail outlets.
Lawyer Leonard Bellavia, of Bellavia Gentile & Associates, who represents some of the terminated dealers, said he deposed Chrysler President Jim Press on Tuesday and came away with the impression that Press did not support the plan.
"It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers," Bellavia said. "It really wasn't Chrysler's decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President's automotive task force."
The dealer closings were not ordered by the bankruptcy judge but by the White House. This puts a whole new light on how the dealers to be closed were chosen and, more importantly, who did it.
And Jim Hoft has found an incredible piece of information. Apparently, a politically connected group of Democrats who own six Chrysler dealerships not only were allowed to keep them, but their competition was deep sixed. Hoft has a link to a blog on the Chrysler dealer shutdowns run by Joey Smith who reports:
The company is called RLJ-McLarty-Landers, and it operates six Chrysler dealerships throughout the South. All six dealerships are safe from closing. The dealer locations are:
Bentonville, AR (northwest Arkansas) Lee's Summit, MO (south of Kansas City, MO) Branson, MO Olathe, KS (near Kansas City) Bossier City, LA (near Shreveport) Huntsville, AL
The interesting part is who the three main owners of the company are. The owners are Steve Landers (long-time car dealer, 4th-generation dealer), Thomas "Mack" McLarty (former Chief of Staff for President Clinton), and Robert Johnson (founder of Black Entertainment Television and co-owner of the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats). Landers has given money to Republicans in the past, but McLarty campaigned for Obama in 2008, and Johnson has given countless amounts of money to Democrats over the years.
This thing is getting stinkier by the hour. And it's starting to smell like rotten bananas - as in the tactic the White House is using is something you'd find in a central American banana republic and not the greatest nation on earth.
I wrote a piece on my own blog a while back when Chrysler dealer George Joseph wrote a letter published on AT about his own troubles with being shut down. In that piece, I made the argument that what we were seeing was not socialism, but gangsterism. And how did it happen?
It can happen because we are barking up the wrong tree when we accuse the Democrats of practicing socialism. Any Chicagoan recognizes what's going on as pure gangsterism - the application of power through the use blackmail, threats, and pure muscle and the devil take the Constitution, the rule of law, and simple fairness.
It can happen because we've elected a president who aggrandizes power unto himself while running roughshod over individual rights.
This story is about ready to explode. All the ingredients are there for a gigantic political scandal that would shake the Obama administration to its foundation and perhaps take down several high ranking officials. All that's needed is one connecting piece of evidence that would tie the White House Automotive Task Force to some political arm of the Democratic party.
Stay tuned...
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flea dip
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Jun 8 2009, 06:14 PM
Post #15
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Rock Star From Mars
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Obama's unconstitutional, Totalitarian thuggery on Chrysler
This could also be placed in the "MSM is liberal" thread- New York Times struggles to candy-coat Obama's GM disaster
This was also placed in the "Democrats/ Liberals who are unhappy with Obama" thread- Shocker: Dems tell Obama to let the market decide dealership closures- The letter was signed by none other than Harry Reid and some of the Democrat leadership. I guess Socialism is okay until some of your constituents (and political donors?) get nailed in the sweep.
The Democrats are learning the hard way the lesson that Capitalists have known since at least as far back as Adam Smith: the free-market is, bar none, the only fair, just, and profitable way to judge the quality of a product and the best way to generate jobs and improve the overall economy.
Quotes from the letter, the full text of which is at Politico.
Closing these dealerships will put over 100,000 jobs at risk at a time when our country is shedding jobs at an alarming rate. We also question the criteria being used to determine which dealerships should be closed and the fundamental fairness involved in this effort. It is our view that the market rather than leaving it up to the manufacturers whose poor leadership contributed to their demise. . . .
We believe the dealerships are one of the auto industry’s key sources of strength and the manufacturers should continue to honor their agreements and contracts. . . . While we understand the desire to reduce the number of unprofitable dealerships, no one has yet sufficiently explained the need to close profitable dealerships. . . .
We are also concerned about allegations that dealers that have previously stood up for their rights against the manufacturers are being targeted by these closures.
They question the criteria for closing dealerships? You mean political payback to unions isn't a good enough criterion? I guess it might be okay if a dealership is owned by a Republican.
Funny how the letter doesn't mention that Barney Frank told GM to keep the plant in his district, which was on the chopping block, open for business. Sounds like sour grapes by the guys who did not get to share in the spoils after the plunder.
So not only do they suddenly and fervently embrace the free market and question the wisdom of raising the unemployment rate by closing the dealerships, they seem to actually care about Obama's running roughshod over Constitutional property rights.
However, we are concerned that manufacturers are closing profitable dealerships to circumvent current contracts which could require expensive buy-outs under normal conditions.
Now that sounds like a letter written by Newt Gingrich, Steve Forbes, or any one of those greedy capitalist pigs on our side of the aisle. Is the tide turning against Obama on this, or are these spineless wonders, who didn't step in to prevent this takeover in the first place, trying to get to the head of the line for pickings from the carcasses?
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Jun 8 2009, 10:42 PM
Post #16
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Rock Star From Mars
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Obama Tells American Businesses to Drop Dead- by Kevin Hassett
I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business.
The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.
Once that happens, their new pay czar Kenneth Feinberg can set the wage for everybody and Rahm Emanuel can stack the boards of all of our companies with his political cronies.
I know, it sounds like an exaggeration. But look at it this way. If there were a power ranking of U.S. companies, like the ones compiled by football writers for National Football League teams, Microsoft would surely be first or second to Google.
But last week, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer came to Washington to announce what Microsoft would do if Obama’s multinational tax policy is enacted.
“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said, “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S.” If Microsoft, perhaps our most competitive company, has to abandon the U.S. in order to continue to thrive, who exactly is going to stay?
At issue is Obama’s policy to end the deferral of multinational taxation.
The U.S. now has about the highest combined corporate tax rate, second only to Japan among industrialized countries.
That rate is so high that U.S. firms have an enormous disadvantage versus competitors.
The average corporate tax rate for the major developed countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2008 was about 27 percent, more than 10 percentage points lower than the U.S. rate.
Tax Burden
U.S. firms have nonetheless prospered because our tax code allows a business to set up a subsidiary in a low-tax country.
When that subsidiary earns profits, they are taxed at the rate of that country, and don’t face U.S. tax until the money is mailed home.
The economically illiterate partisan Democratic view is that this practice is unpatriotic and bleeds jobs from the U.S.
The economic reality is that American companies use this approach to acquire market share overseas. The alternative is losing the business to foreign competitors.
Don’t just take my word for it. A recent paper by Harvard economists Mihir Desai and C. Fritz Foley and Berkeley economist James Hines and published in the distinguished American Economic Review, gathered data on American multinationals to explore the impact of foreign investments on domestic U.S. activity.
Encourage Overseas Sales
Their conclusion was striking. The authors found that “10 percent greater foreign capital investment is associated with 2.2 percent greater domestic investment, and that 10 percent greater foreign employee compensation is associated with 4 percent greater domestic employee compensation.
Changes in foreign and domestic sales, assets, and numbers of employees are likewise positively associated; the evidence also indicates that greater foreign investment is associated with additional domestic exports and R&D spending.”
So when firms expand their operations abroad, taking advantage of the lower foreign tax rates, it helps their workers in the U.S. Higher sales abroad (surprise, surprise) are good for domestic workers.
It is worth noting that this study, which is confirmed by a boatload of evidence elsewhere, was coauthored by the same James Hines who recently wrote a sweeping review of international tax policy with Obama’s top economist, Larry Summers. Summers has to know what the literature says.
Inexplicable Stance
So the question is, why does Obama advocate a policy that so flies in the face of everything that economists have learned?
How could Obama possibly say, as he did last month, that he wants “to see our companies remain the most competitive in the world. But the way to make sure that happens is not to reward our companies for moving jobs off our shores or transferring profits to overseas tax havens?”
Further, how could Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner call a practice that top scholarship has shown increases wages and employment in the U.S. “indefensible?”
I have to admit I am at a loss. Maybe it is good politics to bash American corporations, and Obama isn’t really serious about making this change happen.
But if the change is enacted, and domestic corporate taxes aren’t reduced to offset the big tax hike, the result will be a flight from the U.S. that rivals in scale the greatest avian arctic migrations.
If that occurs, the firms that stay in the U.S. will be at such a huge tax disadvantage that they will absolutely need a “rescue.”
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flea dip
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Jun 11 2009, 09:55 PM
Post #17
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Rock Star From Mars
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Story 1.) GM Car Dealerships
Fox News Host Gretchen Carlson: Government Unfairly Shutdown My Parents' GM Dealership
Story 2.) Obama appoints "Pay Czar," Kenneth Feinberg
Obama appoints 'pay czar' [Kenneth R. Feinberg]
Obama's Plan to Appoint Pay Czar Draws Fire
Obama's three (of many) great lies -mentions pay czar
Now the truth emerges: Obama Administration wants to regulate pay
Obama's New Special Master: Don't Call Him 'Pay Czar'
Four reasons to stop Obama's comp cop
The feds can't 'solve' the problem of executive pay
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