The financial sector already has a $700 BILLION Merry Christmas.
The big 3 auto-makers look like they will get $15 BILLION before the end of the week.
Citicorp is licking its fingers.
According to Forbes, "Northwest's CEO Doug Steenland exited the bankruptcy [last year] with a big pay package. On top of Steenland's salary, reported at $516,384 dollars last year, he will get a total compensation package of more than $26.6 million in stock. That's $5.8 million in stock options and $20.8 million worth of restricted stocks that will vest over the next four years. Northwest workers bore the brunt of the restructuring — after a $1.4 billion a year cut in labor expenses — pilots and flight attendant wages were cut by between 20 and 40 percent."
Huge salaries and other perks for CEOs have drawn ire from investors and made splashy headlines. Home Depot chief executive Bob Nardelli was earning an average of $25.7 million a year - excluding stock options - before he was forced out in a furor over his hefty pay. He left with a severance package worth about $210 million.
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Apparently corporate officers believe in capitalism when everything is going well for the company, but when things get crummy they believe in taxpayer socialism, a.k.a., bail-outs. As the book,
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
points out:
capital and profits are kept private, but losses and risk are shifted to the public.
The majority of Americans are losing their jobs and homes in record numbers, while Corporate America continues to seek "bail-outs" in the BILLIONS that do nothing to actually bail-out companies because most are hording the money or using it to boost profits or to pay-off executives.
Where are the bail-outs for the remnants of America's Middle Class? Where is the Merry Christmas for the majority of hard-working or hardly-working Americans?
Why aren't legislators approving bills to bail-out taxpayers?
Give each taxpayer $200,000 to use as needed. It can be used to pay bills, as a down-payment on a house, pay off all or part of a mortgage or credit cards, put it in savings, buy a new car, start a business, etc. Doing this will put tax dollars back into the system. Banks would benefit and they could provide more loans. Interest rates would increase because there would be competition for investments. The auto industry and corporate sector would be helped. This is the priority solution. Bailing out Wall Street and Corporate America merely adds to the problem. We need to bail-out America from the bottom-up, NOT top-down.
Obama has a good plan to create public jobs, but first we need to provide the majority of Americans with tax dollars more immediately and they in turn will buy the products and services that will get America back on its feet.
Corporate America can NOT believe in capitalism only when it is profitable and then desire socialism when the going gets bad. They need to suck it up and deal with it.
Corporate America has been the economic priority for the past decade. We now are entering the era for regenerating the middle class.
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Merry Christmas for the Chosen Few
