Skip to main content

Bailing Out Failure: The American way

One can conclude, probably almost without contradiction, that the following sentiments will resonate with everyone....

Ken Silverstein, writing on Harper's Magazine:

"I spoke today with a former government official who was appalled by Obama’s suggested emergency aid to the auto industry and by the Bush Administration’s bail-out of the financial industry. Here’s what he had to say:

'I’m against these bailouts on principle but if you’re going to give these firms money, it certainly should be predicated on firing the CEOs, the CFOs and the whole corporate command structure. Management always has an excuse—it was the unions or the economy was bad or something else. But you were the guys in charge and now you want us to throw $25 billion into your failed company?

If it’s decided that a bailout is in the country’s strategic national interest, fine, then do it. But the taxpayers should not be asked to turn the money over to the people who fucked up the companies and ran them into the ground. But that’s the way it is across the board, there’s no accountability. The government didn’t fire anyone after 9/11 either. How do you even talk about generating innovation and creativity when you reward failure with staggering amounts of money? It violates every tenet of leadership and management.'"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports. The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons. In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehi...

Wow!.....some "visitor" to Ferryland in Newfoundland