LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Chief execs should help bankroll bailout

Martin Dean Dupalo, Las Vegas

Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008 | 2:05 a.m.

It was reported that the chief executive of the failed Lehman Bros. investment bank earned $106 million this year and nearly $500 million over the past eight years. Bloomberg News reports that in the past five years more than $3 billion went to top executives.

Richard Fuld is just one of many top Wall Street types who earned billions collectively during the past few years as billions were made and as literally trillions were lost by the investing public in the past few weeks. But where is their shared risk and loss now as the American public is mandated to provide bailout credit against the public’s will?

While I have a decent understanding of economic systems, markets, governmental policies and both Wall Street and Main Street — that is where I live — I have a wild question about supplanting the common man’s bailout of the uber-wealthy.

Could we, via a (Democratically-controlled) Congress and the (Republican-held) presidency, simply ask all the chief executives and top management of Wall Street firms and those formerly respected and now disgraced failing corporations to also contribute their obscene gains?

Should they not agree that it’s OK? Congress and the president should do what they did to the American people recently, in spite of the 100-to-1 calls to government offices voicing “no”: Ignore the chief executives and force them to contribute anyway.

So in the final accounting, the free market is not so free and the risk put forth — by the top management firms — is for us, the common people, while the gains are solidified and beyond reach for Wall Street management. Where are the advocates who argued market fundamentalism yesterday, i.e., no interference, but now argue a massive public bailout?

Discussion: 2 comments so far…

By gunowners4obama

10/12/08 at 10 a.m.

Suggest removal

ASK them? We should be dragging them out of their homes, seizing their bank accounts and other assests, and garnishing their wages until all is paid back. This country started with a revolution. I hate the thought of anarchy or rioting, but it's time to find a middle ground between that and being enslaved by the rich.
By tokaloshe

10/12/08 at 6:59 p.m.

Suggest removal

there-in lie the problem with large corporations and government today in america.
it is called "no accountability".

these problems will only get worse without intervention, next up, the entire health care industry about to become a legalized rackateer.
courtesy of you guessed it, "the united states government".

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