Are You Really Surprised?

Posted March 17, 2009, 12:24 p.m.

The title says it all: Are you really surprised?

Insurance ‘giant’ American International Group (AIG) received a Federal Reserve ‘bailout’ in September of last year which was, in reality, a nationalization of the business. You, I, and every other taxpaying American are now the proud owners of 79.9 percent percent of AIG—whether we wanted to invest in it or not. In October of 2008, AIG received another ‘bailout’ out of our pockets, and the grand total has reached a whopping $112,000,000,000.00. And what did we get?

The now 80 percent federally-owned AIG—which posted a loss of nearly 62 billion dollars during the last three months of 2008—has blithely gone about its business, sending executives on retreats and paying them bonuses. The massive federal investment has not saved the company from its problems, however, and it’s very likely that their next quarterly report will be just as bad as the last one.

Many are angry that, after a nationalization of the business and a massive taxpayer investment, AIG seems to continue doing the very things that got it into the mess in the first place. I’m angry too, but I can’t figure out why anybody is surprised. I’ve been saying from the beginning that these bailouts are counterproductive, that they reward bad behavior, and that they encourage the perpetrators to continue on their same path and cause broader economic harm. When a company fails, it fails. ‘Saving’ the business with federal dollars simply prolongs the inevitable and makes the process more painful.

So here’s an idea: Now that the federal government owns AIG, the federal government runs the show. Simply bite the bullet and shut it down through Chapter 7 liquidation. No more bailouts, buyouts, or bonuses. Sometimes you have to do something painful in the short term for a long term gain, and an end to these bailouts and corporate welfare programs is the only way to turn the economy around any time soon. With every bailout, stimulus plan, and government ‘investment’ (read: nationalization) we further undermine any possible economic recovery.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.

You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove.

Holy steadfastness is not intolerance.

It remains to me, as to so many who have thought about the matter, a source of extreme puzzlement that there should exist anything at all.

Anyone who idolizes you is going to hate you when he discovers that you are fallible. He never forgives. He has deceived himself, and he blames you for it

Are we so much better than the people of other ages and of other countries, that the same allurements of power and greatness, which led them aside from their duty, will have no influence upon men in our country?

Do whatever [Jesus] tells you.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Sometimes people fail to recognize and respect human rights because they have self-interested motives for doing so. In most cases of exploitation, for example, the fundamental failing is moral, not intellectual.

Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, but not against art.

The whole history of the world shows that legislation will generally be both unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm enquiry and with sober self-restraint.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.

Creation of the universe from absolute and complete nothing marked the beginning of space, time, and matter. Theology has held that position for over three thousand years. Cosmology in the last decade or so has come to agree.

Jesus’s acts of compassion and his call for others to do likewise were never to be done by compulsion, but voluntarily, by free-will choice.

A fool, for example, thinks Shakespeare a great poet . . . yet the fool has never read Shakespeare.

Socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, bureaucratic greed, corruption, and avarice. . . .

Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul.

Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.

I like to do my principal research in bars, where people are more likely to tell the truth or, at least, lie less convincingly than they do in briefings and books.