21st
Bankers and the cold war philosophy of “mutually assured destruction”
So this morning’s Financial Times erupted in Fury over this 90% “special tax” on people who took taxpayer money and then used it to pay themselves massive bonuses.
Here are some corker quotes from this morning’s FT “weekend edition” (who put no less than six journalists on the case):
“Introducing this 90% tax is like taking the finance industry out back and shooting it” - Douchebag banker in London (OK the douchebag part is me, not the FT)
“It’s like a McCarthy witch hunt” - Wall Street Fat Cat
“These tax measures will send the US back to the Stone Age” - Dickhead banker in Frankfurt
Personally I’m sick of the “mutually assured destruction” scenario from these jumped up little toss potts. What they are basically saying these days is… yeah, we totally fucked up the world economy by making outrageous bets that verged on fraud….. and yeah, now we want you to pay us a shit load of money so we can keep our second home in the Hamptons and our third home in Aspen…. but don’t you dare cut off the bailout supply or the whole thing will melt down and then we’ll all be screwed. And YOU (the public) will be even more screwed than us (the insiders) if you don’t give us all your money.
This is totally insane. The douche bags who got us into this are basically saying that they are the only ones who can get us out of it (how does that make sense?) At the same time, they’re also saying that they need to be paid a ton of bonus cash to do it, otherwise they just won’t be “motivated” and the “best people” will “leave” the industry.
Leave to be what exactly? Corn farmers? Math teachers? Social workers? Are they serious? And what do they mean by “best people”? do they mean the people who created this un-mitigated disaster? Is that who these “best people” are?
The US tax payer is basically being held up at gun point here. We are being blackmailed into rewarding the very people who we should take out back and shoot. We are being told that if we don’t bail them out, they have the capacity to do even more wrong, in the form of getting up and leaving their jobs (because without that bonus, a 200k base salary just does’nt cut it).
Time to get angry people. Time to throw these parasites in a super max jail to share a cell with the Aryan brotherhood. Time to call their bluff. Personally, I want these people to leave the finance industry. Perhaps if the incentives are lower then we’ll get those old, boring, sensible 1950’s banker types back. I think we need those guys, not the criminal gangs currently running Wall Street.
Check out Matt Taibbi’s excellent article in the April 2nd Rolling Stone Magazine for the straight dope on this.
