When Do The Heads End Up On Poles?
Protesters hired a bus to hand deliver the message that President Barack Obama sent executives of American International Group Inc. last week: Give the bonus money back.
About 20 protesters, along with a press corps of national and international media who outnumbered them, yesterday rode to the Fairfield County, Connecticut, homes of two AIG executives who received portions of $165 million in extra compensation. The payments were made after their Financial Products unit in nearby Wilton had losses that precipitated the insurer’s $173 billion government bailout…
They are lucky only to get polite letters delivered. One executive here last night had his house attacked. Sky reports:
A group has claimed responsibility for attacking the home of former bank boss Sir Fred Goodwin and have warned “this is just the beginning“.
Windows were smashed at the Edinburgh villa and a car parked in the drive-way was also damaged…
But let us not so much as disturb the sleep of an al Qaeda operative, right? This is appalling. Government and media are whipping up public upsetment over the recession and “credit crunch” and trying to channel it towards the recipients of these bonuses.
As if “clawing them back” would right the economic ship? Even a five year old can do the math: certainly it won’t. But, like it or not, the recipients are fully entitled to their contractually agreed bonuses as sure as any of us are entitled to our contracted salary, and that’s that.
In fact, have we ever considered also that those people may well have been good people who worked hard to prevent their companies from losing even more? Of course not. Rather than toning down the volume, governments on both sides of the Atlantic are deliberately overcooking the “bonus issue” to use it for cheap political gain. We are enduring a rising barrage of media and politico carryings on that can be interpreted only as “get the bankers,” and which as we are seeing is now turning into virtually government-instigated personal assaults on those in finance.
Medieval kings having decided suddenly to turn on the Jewish “money lenders” to win the popularity of the mob this blog knows is way too strong a description. Still, what is happening reeks too much of the likes of that not to mention it. It is disgraceful.
As one AIG protester noted:
“They bear responsibility for some of the malfeasance that that company took part in,” said Stacey Zimmerman, a 35-year- old political organizer for Service Employees International Union in Stamford, Connecticut. The tour was “a way to show our members and members of our community how the other half lives.”…
As if she has any clue in the slightest as to what their jobs really entail.
…For Craig Stallings of Hartford, the state capital, that was one of the reasons why he took his three sons, ages 4, 6 and 11, on the bus…
…“It’s important for my kids to see what hard work and an education will get you,” said Stallings, a 36-year-old small-business tax preparer.
Stallings said there was another reason why he made the bus trip. “You shouldn’t be afraid to confront people when they’re wrong,” he said. “You’ve failed at your jobs, so why should you be rewarded?”…
Good. So when any of your customers get audited, they should set up a protest encampment on the sidewalk outside your living room window. And your three sons can see that. Apparently, that is how things are to be done now?
As one local risked stating:
…“You’re bringing people from outside to come and, in essence, harass a neighborhood,” he said. It’s just not right, and I wonder where it might go.”
Indeed, where might it go? What’s next? Severed heads on poles?
Step back and reflect on how we are actually here now. Government doesn’t want us to think on this too much, but government created the regulatory environment that helped bring on this mess. Then government selectively scapegoats those who have to function in that environment when matters go pear shaped?
Convenient, having that ability to have it every which way. It is not the bankers who should be hanged, drawn and quartered. If we think calmly, we know the truth: both of our national governments should be.
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UPDATE: Thomas Frank in the WSJ:
What’s wrong with well-directed anger?
Nothing. Assuming it is non-violent. And it is “well-directed.”
…the commentariat has always thought “populism” to be faintly ridiculous, a thing of mobs and pitchforks…
Interesting that this piece appears today of all days: we seem to be almost there now. It isn’t just a “thought” any longer. Presumably, about that, Mr Frank is well-pleased.
…One of these days it may dawn on our leaders that the public, in this case, is right; that this time the mountebanks and charlatans are not the populists but the responsible-looking CEOs who ran the country’s financial institutions into the ground – and who the administration apparently wants to leave in charge of many of those institutions. The public outrage about performance bonuses isn’t just mindless resentment; it is directed at exactly the instruments that steered the economy into the ditch and the executives who built the system — and who will demand to do business the old way as long as they have breath to bellow…
That’s wrong, but is an 0utlook perhaps to be expected of Mr Frank. At best, it is entering the history mid-paragraph. Because, “the executives” didn’t “build the system,” nor did they create the “instruments.”
They, and those, have to operate within legal parameters set by government. Just as do all the rest of us. The economic troubles of which we are now reaping the whirlwind are the consequence in the first instance of government’s several decades’-long tinkerings around with the housing and banking business realms.
How quickly we forget.
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UPDATE 2, ITN headline:
Vandals target Fred the Shred’s home
An excellent example of media “pot stirring.”
