Government intervention on salaries cannot be a good thing.If these companies think they are better off without the government's meddling, they can continue to run themselves without government money. It seems like I'm the only person here who's actually had to deal with investors so let me explain how this works: the people writing the checks get to attach all the strings they want. They can name executives, put people on your board, set financial metrics... all kinds of stuff.
If you don't like it, you can walk away without their money. Sometimes that's the right thing to do, sometimes it's not. The decision is how much you need the money vs. how much you want to avoid the conditions attached to the money. I don't see why this should be any different just because it's government money.
This year, my company is not giving raises and may also slash our bonus pool (bonuses are a pretty big component of our annual income). We haven't even done anything stupid, it's just that the economy is down and our revenues are down too so money it tight this year. Frankly, we'd all rather take a year without bonuses than lose our jobs. Meanwhile, at companies that have been run so badly that they are completely insolvent, they are handing out billions in bonuses.
Ideally, these guys shouldn't get $1 of government money, they should just go out of business, but the economists with the President's ear are telling him that if that happens, the resulting meltdown will cause much more havoc — i.e. then I would lose my job regardless of how much my company tried to cut back.
Maybe they're right, but whether or not they are, they are going to give money to these ailing financial institution and industrial giants and in that case, I don't want them to just give it out to these failed CEOs. They can get a bonus when their companies are strong enough to run without government help.
government also allowed them to merge into megabanks and in some cases, brokered the deal - now we hear ‘too big to fail’
so now saint uncle sam is going to fix it - and want to place strings on that ‘help’ - maybe some strings should be attached and i don't think screwups should be rewarded
but that applies to screwups in banking
and screwups in government
this is what i think happened
the democrats forced bad loans
these loans were twisted, bundled, insured, sold, rebundled, massaged and kissed tenderly by people that were creating new financial instruments that spread the risk
greenspan kept money cheap after 9/11 - which was probably what kept us afloat after that attack
cheap money - plentiful money - easy loans - housing prices inflated way beyond a reasonable value
pop - bubble burst
i know lots of financial nerds have different thoeries but some agree with mine
so my bottom line is that democrats caused this - democrats have escaped blame for this - democrats are spooking us by declaring economic armageddon tomorrow if we don't let them fix it
i also think bush was spooked by the people advising him in his last few months in office
i have little faith in the financial nerds - every statistic that is released is a shock to them - every month - every quarter - even greenspan admitted he had to rely on intuition
i also think we don't have trillion or so to try theories to avoid a recession - all the advocate ‘experts’ say they have no idea if this will work - all the experts that are not advocates say this has not worked in the past and won't work now
i also wonder how long we will be able to sell paper - seems our credit limit should be about exhausted
seems to me that the democrats caused all this - and now want to fix it - they also want to impose rules on that help
i say let it go - if we meltdown now, do be it - because i think delaying the problem is only putting off the day of reckoning