Merry Christmas 2009 — For The Chosen Few

The financial sector already has more than a $700 BILLION Merry Christmas. The big three auto-makers look like they may get additional “Christmas stocking” money added to the $15 BILLION received months ago. Citicorp still is licking its fingers, while GM already is refusing to repay its bonanza.

 The financial sector already has more than a $700 BILLION Merry Christmas.

The big three auto-makers look like they may get additional “Christmas stocking” money added to the $15 BILLION received months ago.

Citicorp still is licking its fingers, while GM already is refusing to repay its bonanza.

According to Forbes, “Northwest’s CEO Doug Steenland exited the bankruptcy [last year] with a big pay package. On top of Steen land’s salary, reported at $516,384 dollars last year, he will get a total compensation package of more than $26.6 million in stock. That’s $5.8 million in stock options and $20.8 million worth of restricted stocks that will vest over the next four years. Northwest workers bore the brunt of the restructuring — after a $1.4 billion a year cut in labor expenses — pilots and flight attendant wages were cut by between 20 and 40 percent.”

Huge salaries and other perks for CEOs have drawn ire from investors and made splashy headlines. Home Depot chief executive Bob Nardelli was earning an average of $25.7 million a year – excluding stock options – before he was forced out in a furor over his hefty pay. He left with a severance package worth about $210 million.

Apparently corporate officers believe in capitalism when everything is going well for the company, but when things get crummy they believe in taxpayer socialism, a.k.a., bail-outs. As the book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism points out:, capital and profits are kept private, but losses and risk are shifted to the public.

Merry Christmas everyone! Ho, ho, ho.

The majority of Americans still are losing their jobs and homes in record numbers, while Corporate America continues to seek government “bail-outs” in the BILLIONS that do nothing to actually bail-out companies because most are hording the money or using it to boost profits or to pay-off executives.

Where are the bail-outs for the remnants of America’s Middle Class? Where is the Merry Christmas for the majority of hard-working or hardly-working Americans?

Why aren’t legislators approving bills to bail-out taxpayers? What is the hold-up on creating jobs for Americans?

As for a citizen bail-out, give each taxpayer $200,000 to use as needed. After all, what’s another trillion dollars of tax dollars? It can be used to pay bills, as a down-payment on a house, pay off all or part of a mortgage or credit cards, put it in savings, buy a new car, start a business, etc. Doing this will put tax dollars back into the system. Banks would benefit and they could provide more loans. Interest rates would increase because there would be competition for investments. The auto industry and corporate sector would be helped. This is the priority solution. Bailing out Wall Street and Corporate America merely adds to the problem. We need to bail-out America from the bottom-up, NOT top-down.

Or, create jobs by offering tax breaks to companies who hire Americans. Another good option is to create government job immediately to repair and construct our ailing infrastructures, e.g., roads, bridges, tunnels, dams, etc. Doing so will ensure jobs that will provide non-working Americans with salaries to put back into our struggling economy.

Corporate America can NOT believe in capitalism only when it is profitable and then desire socialism when the going gets bad. They need to suck it up and deal with it.

Corporate America has been the economic priority for the past decade. We now are entering the era for regenerating the middle class before this endangered species becomes extinct, as are the saber-tooth tiger and wooly mammoth.

Peter Stern, a former director of information services, university professor and public school administrator, is a disabled Vietnam veteran who lives in Driftwood, Texas.