And you thought it couldn't happen to you

[LnGrrrR]

On a somewhat personal note: if given the chance to do so, would you?

I doubt I could do so, or at least, so brazenly. I think it takes years of trying to over the small guy to be able to do something like that without batting an eye. Heck, maybe your brain just has to be wired like that.

If I were only concerned about money, I probably would have gotten out of the military and gone to work for a contractor.

[Winehole23]

If I were only concerned about money, I probably would have gotten out of the military and gone to work for a contractor.

I don't doubt your character at all. That wasn't really what I was trying to talk about. It takes character to turn down certain advantages. You obviously have it in spades.

Unlike the Ring of gyges scenario, at a certain level of employment execs needn't be secretive about their stealing and indeed are expected to inflict confiscatory rates of compensation. Why be furtive about being a thief when you can do it openly, in a contract?

[LnGrrrR]

I don't doubt your character at all. That wasn't really what I was trying to talk about. It takes character to turn down certain advantages. You obviously have it in spades.

Hey, I'll be honest. I'm not saying I WOULDN'T. I really don't know, because I'm not in that position. I'd just like to think, based on past experience and self-conscious, that I couldn't perform that sort of job/ people over that bad.

[MannyIsGod]

I really don't care about the AIG bonuses - they are such a small percentage of the money that has been handed out by the gov't in the last 7 months. It's the phony outrage by the Obama Administration and Congress that really gets me. This is THEIR mess and they are throwing out red herrings to deflect the attention from them and their culpability in all this.

NONE of these bailouts should have been done. I was against it back in September and I'm against it now. We have laws in place to handle Corporate failures - they should have been left to sink or swim on their own, in accordance with bankruptcy laws.

Yes - it would've been painful, but much less so than the current mess we are in. Our whole culture is now geared to preventing any kind of failure. We can't use red pens to grade papers because it's damaging to young students. We have to dumb down everything so that the dumb kids don't feel bad. And this is the result - we now have the mindset that no one can fail and we must bail out everyone and everything. It's really very sad - and where will it all end?

Herbert Hoover approves of this post.

[AFBlue]

Government intervention in the private sector should be the last resort, because it is at the root of all the populist outrage over executive compensation and corporate expenditures for conferences or naming rights of sporting complexes.

If the private industry is never offered this handout, the average taxpayer has no concern for how a company spends its own funds. I understand, at least in part, why some companies were not left to die...but this slippery slope is the logical result of that action.