Thursday, March 26, 2009

Should These Clowns Run Businesses?

Obama has proposed the federal government take control of any business they judge to be “in trouble.” This violates so many laws and concepts that Americans believe in and defend that one can hardly understand why masses of people are not marching on Washington with pitchforks in hand. I have yet to see much reaction to his pronouncement even among conservatives.

But, even if you put all constitutional questions aside, do you really think that any arm of the federal government can run a business? Just look at what’s happened to AIG.
1. Most, if not all of their problems were caused by laws passed by Congress (Community Reinvestment Act, for example) and enforced by federal agencies that encouraged/demanded bad loans to avoid the so called “red lining” of neighborhoods.
2. The federal government took over AIG, but either did not supervise the expenditure of money or else feigned ignorance of the way money was spent, even when it was sent to shore up overseas banks.
3. To insure that the contractual agreements made with AIG were kept, the federal government hid protection for the AIG bonuses in the “Stimulus” bill, even reinserting it at the last minute with the Dodd Amendment.
4. When the public became upset with the bonus program, members of Congress pretended ignorance and fanned the flames of outrage. Dodd, author of the Dodd Amendment, became one of the most outspoken proponents of breaking the contracts. Shumer threatened to get the money back one way or another.
5. The House of Representatives went even farther: encouraged by Barney Frank, they enacted a law retroactively making a legal contract illegal and those who benefited from it into criminals.

It is beyond comprehension that anyone would willingly work for or do business with any company that was run with such blatant dishonesty and such lack of direction. Leadership like this automatically dooms the enterprise to abject failure. And yet, the Obama administration proposes to improve the economic situation by selecting other businesses to take over.

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