"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 8 May 2009 15:33:52 -0700, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:
snip
No, and I won't until I see Congress step up and put a company like GM,
or
really GM for starters, down like a dog.
There isn't a single reason America ought to go on the hook to create
jobs
in China, Mexico or anywhere else, not in the numbers GM's latest
restructuring plan indicates. That plan says only one thing to me. GM
just
doesn't get it and that means they are too stupid to survive.
Then it will be time to release the productive capital of the 19 banks
just
stress tested back to the market. We have a mechanism to do this.
Congress,
the Obama administration and the American public need to just suck it up,
quit crying like a bunch of Nancy boys and get the hell on with it.

I'd start with a non-bank, AIG. Have Congress pass the necessary
legistlation poste haste, authorize the money with new legistlation and
then
just BK the thing the way we sieze a bank.
American's are not the ones that need a confidence transplant, it's the
banking and financial services giants.. The confidence that Citi needs to
have is that when they mess up big, the American taxpayer is going to
come
in, sieze and sell their ****, kill the men, rape the women and then burn
what's left to the ground without batting an eye. Were these 19 banks to
believe that this might be their fate, they would probably alter their
conduct in the direction of prudent behavior. The banking business might
go
back to being as completely dull as it was in the 40's and 50's. That
would
be entirely appropriate and, to borrow a phrase from Mike Milken, I'd be
highly confident.


JC
snip
While a bit rhetorical, you appear to be entirely correct.

As stated somewhat more tersely in an earlier age:
"Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not
be stolen."
George Savile Halifax, Lord (1633-95), English statesman, author.
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections, "Of
Punishment" (1750).

From a logical standpoint, what has occurred to this point to at
least discourage, if not prevent, the type of corporate excess,
bravado, and brinkmanship that produced this latest crisis? The
answer is *NOTHING*. To be sure some people have been "thrown
under the bus" as scape goats such as John Thain, but they cried
all the way to the bank, and this now appears to be more the
result of infighting at the top levels and not the result of any
mis-deeds or errors.

Many of the people in this NG have worked or work in the metal
trades. How long would you expect to last if you continually
produced excessive scrap and damaged the tools, tooling and
machines? It should be no different for the people at the top.


Ah, but when has it ever been that it wasn't different for the people at the
top from everybody else? You're wishing. The way things are and the way they
ought to be are two mighty different things. That the people at the top have
a different life than the rest of us is a simple fact. But it would be nice
if somehow, someday we could change the status quo and bring some real
equality and justice to our country instead of simply pretending that we
already have it.

Hawke