Monday, November 10, 2008

Re: Another Day, Another Bailout

The more I think about Stephanie's post [Update/correction, just noticed it was LJ's post] the angrier I get at my political "heroes." Who would have thought I'd be praising Circuit City for doing the honorable thing and committing economic hari kari today? This is how it is supposed to work.

If you have a bad business model, you fail. You're assets are then scooped up by evil capitalists looking to put those assets to a better use.

If the "big" three are to be bailed out, and they shouldn't be, any money should be conditioned upon the immediate removal of the CEO, CFO, COO, President or all VPs (there has to be some continuity I suppose), and one-half the board. Also, the top officers of the union should be required to resign.

Alternative II: just sign all the stock over to the employees and former employees and say, "Here, have a go."

While Stephanie and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum, we both saw the prudence of slowing down in September. This is just insane.

3 comments:

Stephanie said...

Yep, there's not enough money in the world to bail out everyone who's going to need bailing out, so I'm skeptical that the bail out was the right thing to do. If either candidate had led in the opposite direction, it would have been interesting. Obama might have done it on a populist theme (not bailing out big biz using little people's money -- well, not in those words exactly, but you get my meaning) and McCain might have done it on free market principles. But nooo. Maybe they knew more than we did/do and there's some reason this really was the right thing to do.

Stephanie said...

And I second Scooter's thoughts on what consequences should be for failing companies.

Scooter said...

I hope that your "they knew more than we do" thought is correct but I'll be shocked. If they knew this a month ago, they knew it 1, 2, 4 years ago. They were/are clutching at straws.