Barney Frank and Charles Schumer are now the de facto chairman and CEO respectively of AIG. Or vice-versa. The plight of the miscreant corporation reveals just what it means to suckle at the federal bosom by accepting a government bailout. The company wanted to go forward with its own plans and promises to pay morbidly obese bonuses to certain employees. In normal circumstances (free market conditions) that decision would be the company’s alone. But AIG is discovering what all the others who nestle at Momma’s breast will find out soon enough: What you surrender to the state is now controlled by the state.
The AIG executive office might just as well be vacated to make room for Barney, Charlie, and all their policy-wonks and number crunchers.
The situation is not unlike a college freshman who goes on a budget-busting binge, then yelps to Momma for rescue. Mom has always suspected her kid of immaturity and incompetence regarding his own affairs, and has been waiting for just this opportunity to take over. The frat kid now has to turn over his credit cards and checkbook to Momma. The student no longer has the freedom to make his own financial decisions because dear old mom writes the checks. The wayward freshman has lost his autonomy.
Frank, Schumer, and scores of lawmakers with a socialist bent are always suspicious of big business. They watch constantly for an opportunity to intervene, to control, to nationalize, and to hack down the tall trees on the corporate landscape so that the marketplace is one vast stretch of mind-numbing flatness and government-guided mediocrity.
The peril of Momma’s lap is that it is not only a pleasant place to snuggle, but she can just as quickly turn you over and spank you. Momma has a big paddle always at the ready—the power to tax. Now that the Great Parent is going to use that power arbitrarily, Momma’s lap is a dangerous place, as AIG is discovering. After all, congress has found AIG’s paying of fat bonuses with bailout money provided by the Great Parent to be squandering of taxpayers’ money.
They who gave us the corpulent stimulus package ought to know.
Principle Based Evaluation: Since all power is given to empower others, not enslave them, it is interesting that the administration of our first black president is using this economic crisis and the bailout package to enslave corporations.
For more information on the author, Wallace Henley, go to: http://wallacehenely.com/
