Monday, December 22, 2008

Bailout What????

An article in our paper this AM has kind of gotten me stirred up so I have decided to vent a little. If you don't want to here someone rant and rave, (venting), don't read any further.

This article talks about the banks that got bailed out and the salaries that their executives get. What am I missing here???? When I was working, and my project failed, I was guaranteed not to get a bonus and if I failed at this magnitude I would have lost my job. These guys not only get to keep their jobs, they got bonuses. The total amount given nearly 600 executives in these firms, is enough money to bailout 116 of the banks that have received money so far. Can you believe this???

I like the way Rep. Barney Frank put it, "These bonuses aren't anything more than a bribe to get them to do a job that they are well paid for in the first place". Evidently these people need all this money to motivate them! The average annual salary, bonuses, and benefits paid to these guys is 2.6 million. I evidently worked for the wrong company all the years I worked. I wonder how these guys got these jobs? The chairman of Capital One Financial Corp. took a 1 million hit in his pocketbook because they had a bad year but he still got 17 million in stock options. (poor baby)

Wells Fargo of San Fransisco got 25 billion of the bailout money and they still paid their top executives up to $20,000 for a personal financial planner. WHAT???? They get paid millions to run a financial organization but need a personal financial planner???? The bank evidently trusts them with their money but they don't trust themselves with their own money. WOW, I can't figure this one out!

The problem with our society today is that no one wants to be responsible for anything anymore. They spill hot coffee on themselves while driving a car and then sue the company that sold them the hot coffee. It wasn't their fault it was the business that sold them the coffee. Businesses now days spend billions of dollars printing and attaching warnings to items we buy to try and protect themselves from lawsuits because people are too stupid to use the product responsibly. We have groups that want to remove all the guns because of crime and pass laws that enable people to sue the gun manufacturers when someone gets hurt. Here again it evidently isn't the fault of the person who pulled the trigger, stored the gun unsafely, or erred, it is the gun manufacturers. (Like the criminals are going to turn their guns in anyway)

Oh well I now feel much better. Thanks for listening, that is if you read this far.
Merry Christmas!!!

"Life is good if you let it." (I just have to let it)

1 comment:

Steve at Random said...

Jim, you said a mouthful when you said "no one wants to take responsibility anymore." Everyone is looking for a scapegoat. I used to think that this was mostly the young people who were such nitwits, but anymore it's people who truly ought to know better. Last night on the news I saw a woman who has been stranded in the Seattle airport a couple of nights because of bad weather. Well, you know what, if you travel by airplane there is always something that is ticking you off, but this gal wants to sue the airlines because they wouldn't fly in an ice storm. Hasn't she ever heard of "forces of nature." What a litigious society we have. But folks, there's going to be a day of reckoning and I'm not talking after we die. Our days of living high on the hog are over. Tough times are a head, and I think the yokels who say it say it will last a year or nuts. Might last 10 to 15 years. One of the first things that has to change is people who shop at Wal-Mart -- it's time we start buying only things made in America. Then we can help our economy. We've got to stick together and start making things here. The "house of cards" is over.