OK, I get it. Letting these nests of vipers collapse under their own weight just isn’t a viable option. They’re too big to fail. Letting them go bankrupt would be like crossing the streams and result in total protonic reversal. I understand that. But at the same time, is it really too much to ask that all that free money that we, the taxpayers, are giving them come with some strings attached?
To be specific, I want three conditions in exchange for the bailout money.
One. I want to own them. Wait. Scratch that. In many cases, we DO own them. The government now owns about 80% of AIG’s stock. It’s high time we acted like we owned them. B-b-but, they say, the government doesn’t do a good job running banks and big companies! The executives that just ran these companies into the ground, and are now on bended knee in front of Congress shouldn’t be talking! When a company is run into the ditch by incompetence, fraud and malfeasance, that’s precisely when the government needs to take over. As a taxpayer, I’m forced to fork over my money to clean up these fuck-ups. I want my elected officials to be the ones making the decisions.
On top of that, I want in on the upside. There will come a time when the toxic paper is removed from these banks, when they become solvent again, and they start becoming profitable again. When the economy comes back and those banks are on their feet, I want a piece of those profits. Maybe through selling the shares of the banks and companies back to the market after they’re profitable, or maybe through the dividends being used to replenish government coffers, I want in. Don’t tell me we have to bust our butts to clean up your messes, but we don’t get a piece of the pie when times are good.
Two. I want regulation. I want Glass-Steagall back. For thirty years, the prevailing mantra on Washington has been deregulation, and where did that lead us? Bubbles and busts, Wall Street sharks robbing our retirement funds of billions, $4/gal gas, Enron, AIG, Madoff, etc. etc. etc.
We’re being mugged. And the way to get the muggers in handcuffs is through regulation. I want an SEC that actually sets and enforces rules that prevent fraud. I want investment banking and commercial banking and insurance and all the different sectors of the financial industry separated and simplified so rules can be enforced. The next time I see some company issue million-dollar "retention bonuses" to employees who are no longer working for them, I want people to go to prison.
Glass-Steagall enforced rules that kept the gyrations of Wall Street under control, left fewer places for the fraudsters to hide, and made Wall Street into a place where all of us could invest, build a retirement nest-egg or a down-payment for a house, or save for education, and have some assurance that that money, plus some profit, will be there when they need it. Since it was repealed, a few sharks have eaten all the other fish in the tank. Wall Street is no longer a place to put your retirement money.
I want the regulation back. I want rules of the road back. I want basic fairness back.
Three. Fix "Too big to fail!" If a company’s so big that its failure will cause the entire economy to blow up, it’s too damned big. It’s time to break these monsters up. Dust off the Sherman Antitrust Act and bring the anti-monopoly hammer down on these guys. Force them to sell off assets. Force them to split up. Make them spawn spin-offs so we don’t have our eggs in one basket. And this needs to go across multiple industries. Don’t stick to the financial industry, or banks. Split up GM into several smaller car companies. Split up the phone companies. Split up the media companies. Split up all the big financial monoliths, and we’ll have a much healthier, more diverse marketplace.
Is it really too much to ask?
(This diary originally posted on Meldroc.com at http://www.meldroc.com/....)