"Bailees" Alarmingly Lacking In Shame

Can’t say I’m surprised that the Bush bailout program lacked safeguards for ordinary people. It’s only the people’s money, after all. But I am a bit surprised at how blatantly the recipients are ripping us off. After the serious public relations fallout and public outrage around AIG’s lavish parties and the CEOs of the Big Three car companies begging from the cockpits of their individual private jets, you’d think they wouldn’t be so quick to rub it in We the People’s collective face.

Yet a big chunk of our money, supposedly designed to free up ultra-tight lending, found its way into huge executive bonuses–$18 billion worth–and to rolling up acquisitions of other banks. Credit doesn’t seem to be any looser. So when an institution is “too big to fail,” you let it swell even bigger so if it does collapse, it pulls down even more bricks of the economy? Dumb!

If I were Obama, I’d be issuing an executive order that demanded some accountability. Bailout money needs to be earmarked to bail out ordinary people trying to make it on 10 or 20 or 50K a year, not the fat cats with eight- and nine-figure compensation packages that got us into this mess in the first place through their bad management.

Surely there must be a way he can say, “look, the purpose of this bailout was clearly not executive bonuses and acquisitions. Money used for those purposes will be considered a temporary interest-free loan, and no payment will be forthcoming until that money has been repaid.” It doesn’t take any more chutzpah than it did to award those bonuses in the first place. (And whatever happened to the idea that bonuses are earned by high performance–and digging a ditch and pouring your company’s assets into it doesn’t qualify IMHO.)

Let’s see the bailout go to fund green jobs, antipoverty programs, and other ways to jumpstart the economy that bypass the greeditarians entirely, and put money in the hands of the people who’ve been hurt.