Olbermann: Time to get tough on bankers
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AIG gives "failure bonuses" to the cretins whose dalliances in derivatives brought the company and part of the nation to her knees? Spin off that division whose traders are owed the 165 million in bonuses, under fund it, and cause it to go bankrupt.
Enough!
Let those with bonuses owed, stand in line before a bankruptcy referee, and wind up — just as you and I would — with half a cent on the dollar. Northern Trust fires 450 employees in December. Then takes a billion six in bailout money. Sponsors a golf tournament. Flies hundreds of clients to Southern California for private Oscar Parties including the renting of an airplane hangar and the hiring of the group "Earth, Wind & Fire?"
Enough!
Fire the executives. And fire up the Justice Department to figure out just how much fraud was involved in asking for a billion-six in bailout money when Northern Trust said nothing as the checks were written, even though it knew in advance that millions could be saved by simply cutting the fluff and the trumpery.
Thirteen more companies that took bailouts, signed the mandatory documents that said they owed no back taxes lied turned out, per Congressman John Lewis of Ways and Means today lied — they owe, just among those thirteen firms, 220 million in back taxes?
Enough!
Have the IRS take these companies, immediately, to the tax courts to which the rest of us are liable. And strip those ancient, outdated laws of Corporation, so that the officers of the corporation are personally liable for their companies' debts, just as you or I would be. And if the monopolies of radio or television rear up to support the corporate structure, to say a contract is a contract, even though that isn't true for a union these days, only for an AIG Trader. Take the invisible, unused Sword of Damocles they still fatuously insist hangs over their heads, and make it real.
Enough!
Make sure both sides are heard. Re-regulate the radio and television industries to limit station ownership and demand diversity of management and product. Re-instate the old rules that denied one man all the voices in a public square. End all waivers of multiple ownership of television stations and networks and newspapers in the same market.
And, yes, if a voice of the privileged classes unfairly uses his cable platform to call our neighbors who are the victims of this, "losers" to insist he alone speaks for the real people.
Or if another, indicts without equal time for defense a particular elected official, and then offers himself as a candidate for that very official's seat, in violation of all canons of good or even fair broadcasting then tell the cable industry that the free ride is over and it is time that it too be regulated by the FCC.
Enough!
To all of you in the Corporate boardrooms.
Stop viewing the public's reaction to this naked, unhindered robbery of the public coffers, and your audacious, immeasurable sense of proprietorship and entitlement stop viewing our anger as some kind of brief impediment, some traffic delay that keeps you from your God-given corporate ballpark sponsorships, and perpetually remodeled offices, and the divine right of $38 million "compensation packages."
You, gentlemen and ladies, and not the good and long-suffering average people of this country, you are fomenting rage in this nation. You are the losers in this equation, and the people are the generous ones; they have not assembled in the streets with pitch-forks and flaming torches. You are the ones perceived — understood in a visceral and even transcendent way — as the committers of what is becoming class economic rape.
And heed this one word before these people grow weary of forgiving you, and instead decide to bring the "good life" — which you have built on their backs — crashing down on top of your heads. When the next boardroom needs re-modeling, or the next bonus paid, or the next jet purchased, remember that one word:
Enough!
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