Let these banks be tried in the court of public opinion — plaster their indiscretions all over the web and shame them into becoming good corporate citizens. But don’t take away our liberties, please. If stock option bonuses hadn’t been stripped from these corporations, we wouldn’t be worried about cash bonuses anyway!

This was rank looting of Merrill, and everyone should face up to that. It was deliberately looting money that should have stayed in the firm to bolster its capital position or have been paid to shareholders. What possible excuse can there be for paying an upper management $1 billion in bonuses for losing $17 billion? That the Board conspired with management to make this possible does not make it less a ripping off of shareholders who were left holding the bag.

Then, to make matters worse, this turkey of a firm carried forward its rapidly deteriorating assets into Bank of America, so that its shareholders may face being wiped out (the incompetence of BofA’s management in working this deal should get them tossed out as well.

On top of all that, the taxpayers wind up footing the bill.

It seems to me that conservatives should be just as angry about this as liberals — particularly if they owned stock in any one of a hundred financial services companies that have been terribly managed. It’s preposterous to defend those managers paying themselves bonuses.

http://thepurplecenter.blogspot.com/

Executive Branch
The executive branch of the government is responsible for enforcing the laws of the land. The president, vice president, department heads (cabinet members), and heads of independent agencies carry out this mission.

Judicial Branch
Courts decide arguments about the meaning of laws and how they are applied. They also decide if laws violate the Constitution—this is known as judicial review, and it is how federal courts provide checks and balances on the legislative and executive branches.

Legislative Branch
Article I of the Constitution establishes the legislative or law making branch of government. It has a two-branch Congress—the Senate and the House of Representatives — and agencies that support Congress.

Three Agencies that Support Congress

* Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
* Government Accountability Office (GAO)
* Medicare Payment Advisory Commission

Congress is the branch of government that is playing with our money and our economy. These three agencies are apparently poorly staffed. I include the medicare folks because the last iteration of the bailout had tucked away, hidden from sight, a nice little medical package that will make the Government responsible for dictating what medical procedures you and I will really need. I assume they’ll make the medicare commission responsible. Apparently, it isn’t enough that the insurance executives get a chance at dictating our health care, now these guys want a chance at it too.

We need to fire the people who are playing fast and loose with our taxes, our “bailout” strategies and our political system. By demonizing capitalism and those who have successfully created wealth, the liberal, left-leaning leeches have simply ensured that the host whose blood they suck will die more quickly.

We can’t let them do this… think of all those poor people who don’t work — if the capitalist pigs and greed-mongering wealthy folk fail, all those poor “disadvantaged” souls might have to get jobs! And the so-called ‘undocumented immigrants’ (as if filling out documents would change things) would have to leave, too — we’d have to realize that nobody deems any job as being one that an American won’t do.

Fire Pelosi, Frank, Reid, the whole lot of ‘em. They work for us. Stop voting them back into power! Let’s really examine the stimulus bill and responsibly analyze what kind of good it will truly do.

Remember, we’ve been here before!
http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2009/01/remember-clintons-1993-stimulus-bill.html