The United Corporation of America

OK, so I have to unload something. Buckle up, because this one has been building up steam for a while now, so I can't predict where it will go or what it will do. Got your safety goggles on? Good, then here 'goes.

Since when did America become a nation of the people for the corporations? When did that happen? How did it become suddenly appropriate for the private, self interested corporations of this country to take assistance from the public coffers as if they were entitled to it? This whole idea of "too big to fail" has a very nasty under-belly, and that under-belly is called "too big to be responsible."

OK, to provide a little context to this rant - this morning I was watching the news as I usually do, and they ran a story about Wells Fargo, which just so happens to by my own bank. Well, it seems that Wells Fargo got into a bit of trouble when folks in Washington found out that the bank was planning a snooty, high priced retreat for some hundreds of its employees to Las Vegas, where they had booked rooms in Vegas' most expensive hotel. Now this would all be hardly news-worthy, except the money that was going to send this heartless greed-balls to Vegas was taken from the American tax payer. Yeah, Wells Fargo got a few hundred million dollars from the federal government out of the TARP program, and then tried to turn around and spend some of that money to pat themselves on the back. If not for some diligent auditor in Washington, my grandma and countless thousands of other fixed-income tax payers would have been conned into paying for some extravagant, wasteful and entirely unjustified corporate orgy. How on earth can these schmucks sleep at night? They are little more than petty thieves if they try to pull this crap.

Don't you just wanna puke at this stuff? Here is another part of it that blows my mind: what on earth are they congratulating themselves for? What could they possibly have to celebrate? I imagine the reasoning at a lot of banks in America is something like this:

"Our poor decisions, wreckless policies and complete disregard for the long-term interests of both our customers and share holders, as well as our whole-sale failure to practice prudent lending and fiscal policy have resulted in the near bankruptcy of our corporation. Our actions, which have partially caused a global recession of epic proportions, have forced us to seek the assistance of the American government, relying on the financial support of the tax paying public. At times such as these, it has become necessary to lay of thousands of employees and make drastic changes in policy and practices. However, since we are too big to fail, and we hold the average tax payer in the most extreem contempt, we have found it prudent to reward ourselves lavishly for our success in getting the poor suckers to bail us out in the first place."

It makes me ill. Seriosly ill. I can't let myself think about it for too long, or I start to punch things. But lets just take a look at the complete disconnect from reason that our government is practicing: Lets take GM for example. They make a series of ridiculous and self-damaging decisions, produce sub-standard cars for several decades, and are unresponsive to the oil and energy crisis. Their cars are over-priced, poorly built, and uninspired. In short - the have proven time and time again that they are poorly run, and that the people at the helm make piss-poor decisions and have 0 foresight and vision. Is this really the kind of company the American tax payer should be forced to throw their money at? And what on earth makes us think that GM is capable of doing anything other than what they have done thus far? Don't you think that if they were capable of correction that they would have already corrected themselves? But no. We don't want them to fail for their failures. We want to keep them on life support so it takes them forever to finally die, so that meanwhile they can remain sick and continue their failed practices.





And here is a little fun math for you. TARP is somewhere around 700 billion dollars. The United States of America contains somewhere around 300 million people. The same money that is being given to corporations that have already proven themselves to be flacid, ineffectual and greedy beyond rational explanation would work itself out to be somewhere around $12,000 per American family of 5. How is that money doing more good in the hands of wreckless and irresponsible corporations than it would be doing in the hands of the average American?

If I had an extra $12,000 bones to spend, you know what I would do? Probably use the money to make payments on my mortgage, or to pay for half of a new car. I certainly could buy myself a kickin' home theater system, for sure. Too bad our banks and car makers and home electronic stores don't need any help, huh?