The Dumbest Financial Move Of The Week
Crowdsourcing is word that describes the ability to bring masses of people together to accomplish a task or reach a goal. And it’s been pretty effective, too.
I would like to nominate Congress for “Dumbest Financial Move of the Week” and introduce a new term: Congress-sourcing. Congress-sourcing is the ability to bring masses of pompous, self-entitled bureaucrats together to bungle a task or fail to reach a goal and, in fact, make things worse.
Congress-sourcing was responsible for not just the dumbest financial move of the week, but a whole assembly line of them this week.
Congress first approved a bill that allowed retention bonuses for AIG executives. In other words, money that we paid in taxes could be used to retain executives who failed miserably. The legislation was fine, as long as the public didn’t find out.
When the public did find out, Congress brought in a CEO who had nothing to do with the company’s situation and very little to do with contract, or even the bonuses. Congress blamed him and were down right rude to him because, hey, everyone hates CEOs.
But the public failed to buy this bit of scapegoating and the agents of Congress-sourcing went to work drafting a tax on the bonuses. This is an example of Congress-sourcing making things worse. Not only is it stupid to tax a bonus they already approved; they are creating a dangerous precedent where taxes could be leveled based on any reason, except for the pure purpose of taxation: to provide revenue that pays for needed government services. What’s next? Taxing companies with government contractors? Taxing companies who provide the government with office supplies? Anything’s possible.
If the credit crunch doomed capitalism, Congress-sourcing has destroyed socialism. We might need to actually come up with fresh non-ideological-based ideas.
So, who do you nominated for the “Dumbest Financial Move of the Week”?
is one of my favorite financial books of all time. It's an allegory about a guy who has a terrible job, and how he overcomes challenges to achieve his dreams.
I agree 100%. Taxing a single small group of people to get the money back is really creepy.
I think Obama and congress are really trying hard to solve this economic crisis. And, not everything they have done is perfect. I don’t know if spending a lot of money is going to help anyway. Giving our money to businesses that have been mismanaged does not seem like a good idea. And the same is true for trying to help individuals.
But taking the money back through taxing a specific group of people seems to cross a line. How many people is it? Like a few hundred? It doesn’t seem right to tax a tiny group of people. I am not quite sure what line was crossed, but it doesn’t sound like the American government. It sounds more like some kind of arbitrary dictatorship.
It’s true that those executives should not have received bonuses. But it’s also true that the American government should not tax tiny groups of people…
“LIKE some kind of arbitary dictatorship”… it isn’t “LIKE” … IT IS!
It will always be like this though, CEO’s will get wage increases, whilst people get retrenched. They will get bonuses when they have 5 aeroplanes.
Haha i love the Stickman cartoon
Thanks Gregory!
I dig the stickman, too.