So an AIG executive has resigned over a pay issue.All the bank executives want pay in the millions of dollars. Back in the eighties, air traffic controllers wanted a pay hike too. But Ronald Reagan fired all of them, and hired any back on at a reduced rate, and the skies have not been full of falling planes. It took guts, we need the same medicine for these morons running the banks.
One difference in the analogy is that the banking fat cats actually did crash the economy. Also, the bankers are asking for millions of dollars a year each do keep on doing what they did so well. The air traffic controllers only wanted a little more pay and a 32 hour work week.
I wrote about this before, and the same still is true.
This subject of bankers' bonuses drives me, screaming, up the wall.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, 'How much is enough?' With a Canadian median family income in Canada of $61,800 how much more do the bankers really deserve? The Globe and Mail reported in early December that 'Bonuses at the country's six largest banks will reach a record $8.3 billion for fiscal 2009.' That is simply outrageous.
Our feckless Canadian finance minister had the temerity to claim that, 'We did not have to bail out banks, ... we did not have to use taxpayers' money to bail out banks in Canada.",' when he refused to take action on Canadian bankers' bonuses.
Now, I can't believe that Jim Flaherty is completely delusional, so he must be lying through his teeth (yet again).
The fact of the matter is that we Canadian taxpayers have, in fact, bailed out our banks ... to the tune of $75 billion.
Not only did this Conservative government bail out the banks, but they did so under the covers, without the openness that we saw in the U.S., but they now have the unmitigated gall to claim that this did not happen, and thus, that the bankers need not be penalized.
It's bad enough that our federal government colludes with the big oil interests (what else would one expect from a prime minister who is an oil man?) but this collusion with the banks, leaving us with a ticking time bomb is completely reprehensible - especially they reward the perpetrators.
Oooops ... I forgot, while blasting the Conservatives, to include a shot at Lord Harper, the autocrat, who is looking to prorogue Parliament yet again.
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time, Canada was a democracy. Gee ... I miss those days :-(