WHEN Will we ever learn?
- By l.t. Dravis
- Published 12/3/2008
l.t. Dravis
I created and have written the nationally distributed marketing newsletter, BOTH SIDES NOW, since 2003. I authored two books, BOTH SIDES NOW, Sell Like Professional Athletes Win and DEATH OF A SALES MANAGER. In 2008, I introduced a daily column for national syndication to newspapers.
By l.t. Dravis
SOMEWHERE
– Tuesday, December 3, 2008 – When will we ever learn to stop trusting the ‘smart
people’?
We
trusted some supposedly smart people, people we pay lots of money to, to use 700
billion taxpayer ‘bailout’ dollars wisely and, now we find out from the
Associated Press that those highly-paid, well-benefitted folks let us down.
Auditors
from the Government Accounting Office (GAO) are telling us that the Department
of Treasury, headed by Henry (Hank) Merritt Paulson, Jr. (you’d think a guy who
has a B.A. in English from
Right?
Wrong.
The
GAO report says, “Treasury has not yet determined how it will monitor
compliance with this or other requirements such as limitations on dividend
payments and stock repurchases.”
Huh?
Let
me translate this into terms people like me (no Harvard MBA, I’ve never been
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs, and I’ve certainly never
been Secretary of the Treasury) will understand: This is like me going down to
my local bank and asking to borrow fifty or a million dollars. I don’t tell the
bank how I’m going to spend the money and I don’t tell the bank how much my
‘collateral’ is worth and I don’t tell the bank when, if ever, I plan to give
them back their money.
But
they give me the money, anyway.
Whattadeal!
The
GAO’s 72-page report also tells us that banks are not lending taxpayer money!
But, wait a minute . . . we were sold this
‘bailout’ plan by members of the House and Senate who told us that the whole
point of the $700 billion bailout was to stimulate the economy by freeing up
credit markets.
These Representatives and Senators talk
a lot about ‘putting country first’ and chatter incessantly (especially in
front of TV cameras) about how devoted they are to ‘protecting the taxpayers’
of this great nation.
These patriots includes Senator John
McCain (Annapolis, class of ‘58), George W. Bush (remember him?), Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (JD Georgetown University), Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell (JD, Kentucky Law School), Senator Chris Dodd, Chair of the
Banking Committee (JD, University of Louisville), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(Degree in something from Trinity College), Representative Brad Miller (JD,
Columbia University), Representative John Shadegg (JD, University of Arizona) and
too many other well-educated geniuses to mention here.
So, why
didn’t even one of these very smart folks understand that it is not very smart to
allow bankers to run free with billions of taxpayer dollars?
And,
if even one of them was smart enough to figure that out, why didn’t that ‘smarter-than-the-rest’
person do something about it?
Unfortunately,
you know as well as I know that we’ll never know.
So,
how did Hank’s Treasury Department react to the GAO report?
In fact,
Kashkari is so smart, he’s perfectly comfortable with the Department of
Treasury coming up with its own program to monitor banks . . . but he doesn’t
know where or when that will happen.
So .
. . when will we ever learn not to trust the ‘smart’ people?
We believed
them when they gravely announced that we were in a so-called ‘financial crisis’
and we trusted them when they told us, just a couple of months ago, they could save
the economy . . . if only we would allow them to borrow $700 billion in our names
to give to banks in their names.
How’s
that worked out for us?
They
let us down . . . again.
Surprised?
I’m
not.
Why?
Because
this is the same group that pushed us into a pointless war in
So,
we shouldn’t be surprised that they let us down on the bailout.
That
is what these people do.
They
let us down . . . you know that, I know that.
My
question is, why do we continue to let them get away with it?
When
will we ever actually hold these people accountable to do the jobs we elect –
and pay - them to do?
When
will we screw up enough courage to tell them to stop wasting their time and our
money with self-aggrandizement, posturing, and strutting?
When
will we tell them to either do the people’s work or get out of the way so
someone else can?
After
all, as of 5:04 PM, Eastern Standard time, December 3, 2008, there are 305,802,056
of us and only 535 of them.
So .
. . what are we afraid of?
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