Some thoughts:
The Empire State’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which runs New York City’s buses and subways, is not that different from Citigroup, in that it’s a supposedly independent, corporate-style public authority that enjoys the perception of a government guarantee.
Last week, the MTA consummated an embarrassingly profligate deal with its largest labor union, and yet the political class has largely escaped accountability.
Because the MTA is supposedly independent of political forces, Governor Paterson can adeptly deflect attention away from his responsibility for the deal, although the powerful transit union, of course, knows to be thankful.
Meanwhile, the MTA’s own management bureaucracy plays its role only too well. The MTA itself largely serves as a distracting generator of incompetence and intrigue, so the media doesn’t focus consistently on the fact that it’s the elected pols who are only to happy to give away the store at the expense of actual investment in transit and in the city’s economy.
Do we really want the global financial industry — necessarily affected by Citi’s outsized, government-guaranteed role — to be subject to the same poisonous and demoralizing political and public-policy dynamics as New York’s MTA?
This is where corporatism (in the interest of political correctness, I won’t call it by its true name — fascism) leads.
Por La Union todo. Fuera de La Union nada.
Do we really want the global financial industry — necessarily affected by Citi’s outsized, government-guaranteed role — to be subject to the same poisonous and demoralizing political and public-policy dynamics as New York’s MTA?
Do we really want the US health care industry to be subject to the same poisonous and demoralizing political and public-policy dynamics as New York’s MTA? Anyone who thinks ObamaCare won’t lead us there is too naive to breed.
Do we really want the global financial industry to be governed by short-termism, criminality (fraud) and greed? Maybe we do. However, if that is so then the people responsible for the current mess should be held to account. They ought to be prosecuted for various forms of financial crime, sentenced to life without parole and stripped of every asset they own, to be used to partially offset the similar fate that their greed and stupidity have inflicted on many others. At the very least.
Personally, I think that life without parole is too soft a punishment. Those responsible ought to be tried as the traitors they are, and if found guilty should be hanged by the neck until they are dead. And not by the namby-pamby “long-drop” method either.
Traitors? YES. They have caused more economic damage to America than Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany managed together.
Related: Proskauer Rose (a seriously mercenary law firm that defines New York’s legal scene) is quitting its representation for MTA management because “they are too close to labor.” Apparently the management and labor were making deals behind the backs of even their own lawyers. How screwed up is that?
It is only screwed up if you assume that MTA management and labor are interested in serving the public. They are interested in serving themselves from the public purse, without getting caught.
Do we really want the global financial industry to be governed by short-termism, criminality (fraud) and greed? Maybe we do. However, if that is so then the people responsible for the current mess should be held to account. They ought to be prosecuted for various forms of financial crime, sentenced to life without parole and stripped of every asset they own, to be used to partially offset the similar fate that their greed and stupidity have inflicted on many others. At the very least.
Mr. Christian, are you familliar with the idea of ex post facto laws? There is a reason that they are banned in the US. If you can point to any law THEN on the books that these incompetents violated, then I will agree that they should be prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of those laws. If not, then consider this to be a “life lesson,” and don’t entrust your money to charlatans. Like all flim-flam men, the so-called “financial wizards” were obvious about their methods (in this case, a complete dependency on speculation and a bubble-mentality), so anyone who got burned by the jackals deserved exactly what they got. No production, no prosperity.
As to your assertion that they “caused more economic damage to America than Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany managed together,” the claim is farcial on its face. Neither Imperial Japan nor Nazi Germany were able to cause major economic damage to this nation, unless you want to count defense spending (which incidentally raised us out of the Depression, not to mention protected the free world from an existential threat) as “damage.” The collapse of Eastern Airlines twenty years ago “caused more economic damage than Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany managed together,” as you put it.
We are a nation of laws, not of men. When the law is broken – enforce it, rigidly and ruthlessly. When no law is broken, then do not form a lynch mob. Demogoguery (sp?) gets you nothing but tyranny in the long run.
Neither Imperial Japan nor Nazi Germany were able to cause major economic damage to this nation, unless you want to count defense spending (which incidentally raised us out of the Depression, not to mention protected the free world from an existential threat) as “damage.”
While I agree in general, it is a myth that the Depression was ended by defense spending. It was ended by the war, but not the spending, which produced weapons, not wealth. The war meant that Roosevelt had to quit tinkering with the economy, which had been keeping it sick for years, and it also sucked up much of the labor pool and sent it overseas. After the war, a Republican Congress didn’t allow the tinkering to pick up again, and we finally had a recovery.
Economic booms tend to follow crisis wars because the post war survivors unify and desire stability. Stability is also what business wants. The age we’re in now (pre-crisis) is led by the incompetent whose mantra is “Change!” Business doesn’t like shaky ground, hence the side-lining of capital. I think it won’t come back until the next war is done. (q.v. the guilded age, post-revolutionary, post-Napoleon, etc.)
James Buchanan, the economist, is widely known for saying that one of the best things govt could do to promote economic growth would be to freeze the current rules, whatever they happen to be, re regulations, tax rates, etc.