Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), has suggested that AIG’s executives should follow the Japanese example and resign or commit suicide. What are the chances that any of them will take them up on it?
Okay, but seriously, why wouldn’t it be a good idea to require that the top management of every company taking bailout money be removed before a cent is paid over?
You’d think that any company that takes bailout money would at least be forced to undergo some sort of scrutiny which would include an examination of executive performance. The presidents of the companies I’ve worked for have all had to do that and some of them got fired by the board for underperforming.
Of course, maybe a lot of these guys HAVE resigned. I’ve never seen any sort of systematic review of what’s happened to the bigwigs of the bailout queen corporations.
I’m pissed at AIG execs, too, but that comment struck me as astoundingly inappropriate coming from a US Senator, especially an experienced one such as Grassley.
Yeah, that’s a gobsmacker. I won’t say that the same sort of ironic approbation of ritual atonement suicide inspired by this economic clusterfuck has never crossed my mind, but it certainly would never cross my lips. Telling anybody that they need to kill themselves, even as rhetorical hyperbole, is just not nice.
By the way, can you imagine the outrage among the far-right nutroots if a Democratic politician had said this? There would be deafening howls about how the class-warrior crypto-communists were finally showing their true colors and fomenting the revolution of the proletariat, yaddadi, yaddada. Populist rage seems to be one of the (many) things that certain conservatives consider patriotic when a Republican does it but treasonous when a Democrat does it.
Maybe it’s time not to be nice. Politicians and citizens alike feel free to say that people ought to be put to death for things like murder and rape. Perhaps it’s time that massive mismanagement of the public’s money be accorded something like that level of social poison. I’m not saying that there ought to be a death penalty for financial fraud and mismanagement, but perhaps it’s time for society to treat these people with an appropriate level of scorn. If nothing else, someone who has lost hundreds of billions of dollars while lining his own nest should have at least the same trouble keeping a job or getting another job as a convicted murderer.
You could make the same claim about many members of US Congress. I’m not all that familiar with ol’ Chuck to comment on if his record should exempt him for the “resign or die” idea, but many congresspeople are the last group of folks to be commenting on corruption, incompetence and greed.
A remarkably dumb thing for a Senator to say.
If we are not actually advocating a death penalty for financial fraud and mismanagement, then we ought not to be encouraging people who commit financial fraud and mismanagement to become dead. Either it’s a capital crime or it’s not.
Good Things To Borrow from Japanese Culture: Sushi, sake, haiku, miso, flower arranging, anime, bullet trains.
Bad Things To Borrow from Japanese Culture: Shaming people who are not legally guilty of a capital crime into killing themselves.
In this culture, if society decides that a certain act should be punished with death, it’s society’s responsibility to inflict that punishment. I see no upside whatsoever to adopting an ethos of “honor suicide” to try to make people inflict that punishment on themselves if we’re not prepared to inflict it.
And mind you, it’s not like I’m particularly sorry for AIG execs; in fact, pretty much the most I have to say in their favor is that they shouldn’t be encouraged to literally off themselves. And even that is not so much because I care about their suffering as because I think it’s bad for the rest of us to openly wish people dead if we’re not willing to take responsibility for killing them.
I think there should be more of this happening, but some people would say the government has no right to dictate how a business should be run, even if the business has screwed up so badly it requires millions or billions of dollars just to stay afloat. After all, the execs know how to run a business… right?
What Grassley said was crass, but I can’t get mad at him for saying something a lot of other people have already thought. Or for expressing a level of outrage a lot of people are feeling. It’s pretty stunning that some of these executives and companies think it’s absolutely fine to take big salaries or bonuses and go on spa retreats funded by bailout money necessitated by their own screwups. There are plenty of people at AIG who I’m sure did earn their bonuses this year, but a lot of companies who didn’t take bailout money are cutting back on bonuses because times are bad.
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/03/grassley_calls_for_contrition_not_suicide.php
Grassley clarifies that he doesn’t in fact want anyone to commit suicide.
But no one really is encouraging people to “become dead.” It’s obviously hyperbole. But perhaps there is a point between “no adverse consequences” and “dead” where society can readjust its treatment. I’m not talking about criminal prosecution. As I said before, why shouldn’t society as a whole treat these people in such a way that they are never again able to hold a position of responsibility?
Good, then we can drop the references to suicide.
Hold it right there. Why aren’t you talking about criminal prosecution? If people commit fraud and mismanagement, isn’t criminal prosecution exactly what they deserve? And perhaps civil lawsuits as well?
I am horrified and appalled that there seems to be a resigned assumption operating that “malefactors of great wealth” are basically immune from any legal retribution for their actions. Are we really reduced to trying to figure out ways to ostracize and humiliate these people socially because we can’t punish them in any other way?
You see no rhetorical value in hyperbole? Or valid expression of anger and disgust? I do. I for one am glad that Grassley said what he did because it ratchets up the seriousness of the matter. These people need a kick to the head to make them pay attention. And a U.S. senator’s suggesting that they might consider killing themselves seems to me a very good way of getting their attention.
Because criminal prosecution is not and should not be the sole method for dealing with or deterring undesirable behavior.
Maybe it is, but I think there should be something more than that. Legal action shouldn’t be the sole recourse for dealing with undesirable behavior. What if we can’t prove that what they did was technically illegal under current law? We still know what they did and why what they did should not be condoned by society.
All nonsense. I say good for Grassley, took balls to say it, and I’m with him. The one caveat I’d impose is that the same rules apply for elected officials.
Not to mention the fact that it was Congress that handed all that money to AIG, with no strings attached. So maybe ***they ***should resign or kill themselves.
Well, I can certainly see that side of it, as well; we do need to cut the crap and call a spade a spade, but I don’t wish for that frankness to just be a tool for demagoguery.
Fraud deserves criminal penalties; mismanagement deserves internal correction by the ownership. (That we have, currently, a system in which ownership is separated from control makes it much more difficult to actually implement the latter practice, but it does not require direct Justice Department intervention to correct.)
This is how I feel. If the government gave me billions of dollars, and then became righteously angry that I spent it on blow and hookers, who should taxpayers be most angry at? I have no love for those getting giant bonuses at AIG, but it’s not their fault the government is giving them obscenely large sums of money.
All very well said.
I think its panic. The Pubbies have a long-standing image as the party of the wealthy. Add to this the surge towards the center-left that was present even before the trajectory of the shit intersected the locus of the fan.
They are therefore eager to get out in front of this populist rage, lest it turn them on, and rend them.
Negligent or even accidental actions causing the physical inury or death of another person are or can be considered as crimes and prosecuted. If you take that immediate injury (i.e. car accident with a drunk driver) logic and play it all the way out, there may be something to it. If I, because of your negligence as the CEO, are left without insurance or a job or my life savings, and I am unable to provide care for myself or my family and I or they succumb to a medical condition or injury that would have been treated more aggressively or differently, one could argue that without the negligence of management, such death or injury might not have occurred. It’s a looong stretch, but I’d bet some lawyer is gonna try it.