Ruminations on music, culture, America and the world stage
Michelle Malkin reprints a Heritage Foundation graph showing which recipients of federal money would be subject to TCM’’s bank tax and which ones wouldn’t – and the correlation between that and which organizations have been paying back their bailout largesse. It’s not the same group of recipients.
Tom Blumer at Pajamas Media on how big business is prone to act in ways antithetical to free-market capitalism, such as appeasement of the regulatory leviathan and an attitude of entitlement to public largesse.
I’d like to make the case for Barney Frank. Check out his remarks about meeting with banking-industry leaders in Davos, Switzerland.
Stocks wipe out their advances over continuing jitters over TCM’s hatred of banks. It’s fine with him. It’s all part of his plan for American decline.
Stocks have slid 200 points since TCM announced his latest hate-the-banks move.
Tigerhawk makes the important point that, with TCM’s diatribes and intimidation tactics toward banks over the last couple of days, he’s picking on the wrong industry.
While here at BN we have no fondness for TARP, the banking industry as a whole has paid the money back and is now operating profitably again. Then there is the bailout of the auto industry, which hasn’t done a damn thing to return that to profitability.
But then, it’s not about restoring businesses to health. It’s about fomenting class warfare and trying to get people worked up about “greed.”
His announcement of a fee on Wall Street banks as a way to recoup the TARP burden on taxpayers. He trots out all the cliches in doing so: “obscene,” “fat cat.” Speaks in forthrightly disdainful tone about profits (they’re “massive,” doncha know) and bonuses.
The fee will not just be payed by TARP recipients currently paying back the money. Those firms that have already paid it back and – get this – those that never took any TARP money will be on the hook.
It’s interesting to note, in light of recent posts here at BN about the roots of collectivist thinking – Rousseau’s “general will” and Herbert Croly’s contempt for individualism and his obsession with “equality” – the macro terms in which TCM puts the matter of the investment banking houses, that they have had their success because of a general, overall “American people” rather than the particular banks having relationships with actual customers.
The American people must win this war the Freedom-Hater-controlled government has waged on us.
But that’s just what the Aquarian Totalitarian did on 60 Minutes in the runup to today’s meeting with executives from the banking industry. This guy’s hubris and utter disdain for capitalism knows know bounds.
The only thing I hope is wrong with this article is the part about how the execs are expected to take a “conciliatory tone.” I hope they go in there prepared to tell TCM to go to hell and walk out at the first sign of disrespect.
This is another clear-cut case of The FHer regime doing the exact opposite of what would be needed to turn things around. It’s pointless to browbeat bankers about credit when the business community has no prospects for paying back any money the banks would loan them. You de-regulate and you lower taxes. That is, I must once again point out, your agenda is different altogether. If your intention is to signal to the banking industry that the eventual endgame is government takeover, it makes perfect sense to go about hings this way.
Our enemy is formidable. Conciliatory tones have no place in our dealings with him.
Podcast of John Hindraker’s fascinating interview with Peter Schweizer, author of Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy – and How They’ll Do It Again If No One Stops Them.
And remember: as I said in a recent post on the environment, these goose-steppers’ next objective is shaming and intimidating manufacturing corporations to sign on to cap-and-trade.
Prosperity and the free market cede the floor to meltdown and socialism.
And as the first paragraph on page two of the linked article reminds us, it’s important to remember who ACORN’s lawyer was in 1994 when it sued Bank of America.
The small city I live in is unusual in that it is home to the world headquarters of a Fortune 500 company that is considered the world’s premier maker of its particular product line. It used to be even more unusual in that it also was home to yet another Fortune 500 company, one that specialized in aftermarket automotive subassemblies (suspension systems, exhaust systems) and in earlier decades had had a diverse array of products including stereos and kitchen apliances. That firm was merged with an out-of-state concern and eventually had no presence anymore here.
Such is the nature of Schumpeter-esque change. It has happened again here, quite suddenly, in fact.
The big manufacturing firm that is still here – was founded here, in 1919 – owes its existence to the fortune of one particular family, which had started one of the first banks in town, in 1871. The bank grew quickly, and its founder’s son provided the venture capital for this now-multinational manufacturing company. In the last few decades, the bank’s corporate structure changed, so that the loans-and-deposits operations were one part, along with securities, of an overall financial-services parent organization.
The founder’s great-great-great nephew (I think I have the number of “greats” correct) was board chairman of the manufacturing company and also a board membr of the financial services corporation. He was a remarkable gentleman (undeniably, even though his overall ideological orientation wasn’t my cup of tea), a Rockefeller Republican (as in friend of David Rockefeller), the first lay president of the National Council of Churches, a board member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an avid art collector (a Monet he’d had in his home was recently auctioned by Sotheby’s for a record figure), a visionary who made our city an architectural showcase, and, notably, a name on the list of Nixon’s enemies that John Dean read at the Watergate hearings. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him the most progressive businessman in America.
His youngest son came home from the east coast over twenty years ago to join the array of family interests. For the past several years, the son has been the chairman of the financial-services corporation.
The bank itself was taken for granted by long-time account holders such as myself as a pillar of stability. I’ve had a checking and / or savings account there all my life.
Yesterday, federal agents took it over, declaring that it was being run in a unsafe and unsound manner.
This wasn’t a bolt out of the blue. The local paper (for which I write, but not, so far anyway, about this matter) had been reporting on its woefully undercapitalized status for some time. It seems that this chairman – family scion had succumbed to the exotic-mortgage package fever of the last few years and put the company’s assets in a very shaky situation.
The federal government has handed management over to an Ohio firm for the time being. All branches and offices will be open for normal hours of operation, starting today.
In a few minutes, I’ll be going down there to make a deposit. It’s going to be weird. I’ve come to know the tellers at several branches, at least well enough to engage in some light banter. Will they be there today? Who will it be taking my money?
BN readers know I’m a free-market purist. That remains true. I hope that I have conveyed over the years, though, my understanding that all economic twists and turns have a human element, have implications for the lives of flesh-and-blood human beings. When something like this happens, people’s circumstances are thrown into upheaval.
I wonder what will become of this chairman. Will he stay in town? Is the heritage his dynasty imparted to the community going to quickly fade now? (All the family homes, including the founder’s 1865 Victorian mansion, are either for sale or already sold.)
This is clearly a cautionary tale, but let us proceed soberly in gleaning the lessons to be learned from it. It seems to me that at least one thing it tells us is that the realm of economic activity is an excellent arena of life in which to observe the law of karma at work. Decisions have consequences. We don’t get to make choices of one kind or another and then go merrily on our way with no expectation of either getting burned or blessed, depending on how closely we brought to bear our minds, hearts and souls. Sometimes we can bear much responsibility for affecting the circumstances of many other people. Behind the numbers there is always quite a story.
The retail giant gets behind TCM’s socialist health-care plan.
The pharmaceutical industry is hoping the FHer alligator will eat it last.
Some organizations and institutions will be joining the effort, whether they characterize it that way or not. They have business to do.
Star Parker says that, after the 1990s advent of welfare reform, in which many in the demographic targeted by welfare-state programs – that is to say, inner-city minorities living with squalid housing, bad schools and crime – got on their feet and joined the free-market economy, we are now at a juncture where, under our first black president, once-robust American corporations are lining up to come onto the socialist plantation that degraded and imprisoned so many individuals.
When was the last time you saw something as pathetic as Ford CEO Alan Mulally’s promise to Congress to work for a one-dollar salary if his company gets a bailout? This is symbolism born of desperation.
We all know what needs to happen: Congress needs to scrap all this CAFE-standard nonsense and the Big Three need to scrap their UAW contracts and get labor costs in line with those of their non-American competitors.
But, as I asked in the post below with regard to Congress enacting a reprieve on income and investment taxation, anybody wanna bet on the likelihood of the obvious sensible solution becoming reality?
eharmonycom settles a lawsuit by agreeing to post homosexual profiles.
So much for free markets, respect for individuals’ moral codes, the definition of family that served humankind quite well for 10.000 years and still serves all other species well, and sanity generally.
You have to ask yourself why the person bringing the lawsuit didn’t take the entrepreneurial route and set up a matchmaking site for those who see things his way.
Freedom is dying before our eyes without so much as a whimper.
