In Barack Obama’s brave new caste system, profiteers have quickly become the untouchables. Much of the debate over healthcare can be reductively boiled down to the fact that those who are more liberal think that it is immoral for a company to profit off of the health of another person. Most conservatives don’t care about this, and tend to think it is more immoral for the government to even hint at taking an even larger role in the health care system when its financial track record in the health care systems that it already runs are so dismal. Since liberals are currently running the government and a large portion of the media, it hasn’t taken long for a climate to develop in the country where making a profit is seen as a grievous sin and recklessly spending public finances through record deficit spending is seen as a virtuous act.
It’s nice to see that this new change in attitude hasn’t been lost on the treasury department. Earlier this week, there were several news stories about certain institutions paying back their TARP money. They were even going to pay back the money with some interest, hence the taxpayers were making a profit. However, yesterday we learned that the wise stewards of TARP haven’t been the great investors the original stories made them out to be. According to this story, a recent audit shows that taxpayers are showing a loss of $61 billion dollars on just the AIG and auto company bailouts. This loss wipes out the $19.5 billion profit reported earlier this week.
TARP
If a publicly traded private company engaged in this kind of behavior, it would be investigated for securities fraud. If the public company of our government, whose stock is privately traded among various special interest groups, engages in this kind of financial reporting, nobody cares. Also, if a company with a $700 billion market cap reported a $40 billion loss in one year, the market’s reaction would be swift and painful. If Obama & Bush inc. loses this much money, there’s not much that can be done. After all, there was so much resounding shareholder…I mean taxpayer support for Obama to buy off his supporters in the UAW with the auto bailout, that this is a bad investment that we are all going to have to live with.
Most presidents get out of office and build a library or something. Obama should start an investment bank.
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What about the 50% tax on bank bonuses in the UK? Same thing might happen in France. It seems that the virus of profits is on both sides of the ocean.
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How did we let this scourge become so widespread?
******In Barack Obama’s brave new caste system, profiteers have quickly become the untouchables. *******
And it’s a real shame too. I suppose they’ll just have to be comforted by their billions of dollars as they sell munitions to warlords in Africa and South Asia and medicine for the highest possible price they can extract from a dying man.
If I am understanding your lament here: As much as they need their excessive profits, they need love.
It’s a sad commentary on a society that doesn’t allow these people to make and keep and charge whatever they can in, at best (in many cases), morally murky goods and services, but doesn’t also praise and revere them in parades and awards ceremonies.
And it’s a real development, this. John Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt had their praises sung by governments, commonfolk, and newspapers for all the monopolizing and price-gouging they inflicted.
Show some perspective, man! Rather than just reacting to newspaper headlines with your trademark recalcitrance.
Chuckles
It’s nice to see some perspective brought to my blog. Equating all those who earn a profit with arms dealers who illegally sell munitions to warlords and Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt, is a certainly a premise I can’t hope to assail. I would much prefer an economy where everyone works for non-profits that suck funds from the public treasury through grants and use the money to help immigrants start child-prostitution rings.
You’re a real arse.
Everything about your existence makes me sad. You are a small, bitter person.
I was just racing to the lowest common denominator, like you did. If all people who are working to make a profit are like arms dealers to warlords, then all people who work for non-profits are like the ACORN employees who were eager to help immigrants start a child prostitution ring.
I honestly don’t care if those who earn a profit are loved or hated. You are right, they have their reward. However, those who are responsible for losing tens of billions of dollars deserve to be locked up or pilloried or at the very least fired. I don’t understand why you consider this position to be controversial.
From Websters:
Profiteer: one who makes what is considered an unreasonable profit especially on the sale of essential goods during times of emergency
Best case scenerio is you don’t know the definition of the words you use.
Other best case scenario: I operate from a vantage point where words are defined by more than dictionaries. In the case of your average Obama supporter, an unreasonable profit is arguably any profit at all. This is evidenced by those who bemoan the “excessive” profits of the healthcare insurance companies, when the profit margins of these companies are relatively low. I know what the word means, and I used it playfully.
Awesome.
Feel free to change definitions, don’t tell anybody, and hold others responsible for your redefinitions. I guess that’s what it means to be ‘playful’ with words.
I really am getting a feel for this fantastical world you live in. I thought was just emotionally reacting to an egregiously unfair, irrational comment on your part, but given a couple days reflection, I stand by my initial assessment: sad and small.
But then again, maybe I’m being playful with those words, and I’m really intending “sad” to mean “insightful” and “small” to mean “clever”. We’ll just never know with your new set of rules. Rather liberating, knowing I can make things mean other things retroactively.
I believe you exaggerate. Bottom line: I know what the word profiteer means. I believe that is not a stretch to assume that those who sympathize with Obama and his policies consider anyone who makes a profit doing anything to be a profiteer. If I was reading this aloud I would have read the word “profiteer” with an intonation that would have implied that I was using the work facetiously. I am not completely changing the defintion, but there is more to language than just dictionary definitions. Tone, context, authorial intent, reader’s frame of reference and other factors will alter what “words actually mean.” Although I am pretty sure you don’t care about this.
To address your first comment, you are not understanding me correctly. I am not arguing that those who make a profit should be loved. However, it is strange that they should be painted in a negative light, while those who destroy wealth and value, run up massive deficits, and give away something they don’t have should be painted positively. Semantic technicalities aside, I don’t see what you are arguing for. So you don’t like “profiteers,” I get it. So let’s look at the alternative. Let’s focus on the bailout of the auto companies, that is currently running a $25 billion net loss. “Profiteer” bondholders were told to basically screw themselves and get to the back of the line, nullifying not just specific legal contracts, but the very idea of a legal contract in general. The currency of legal contracts gets exchanged for the currency of political pandering as the Unions that voted heavily for Obama are given the farm. Not surprisingly, the companies continue to bleed money. I say that I think this is stupid, and it isn’t too many logical steps later, and I am being called an arse and the value of my existence is being questioned.
I have to say that I see your world as equally fantastical.
p.s. for the record, according to my rules, sad and small do mean insightful and clever, so thanks for the compliment.
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