Whose intentions and for whose results?

This country sits at a great crossroads financially. The banks and investment companies that gave subprime mortgage loans to consumers that were not financially stable are in essence asking for a very hefty life line. According to Mr. Charles Krauthammer, an editorialist for the Washington Post and author of the article “Good intentions yield bad results”, the “Paulson Plan” is the way to go if everyone will just stick their heads in the sand and ignore the “extras” attached to it so that all those CEO’s will be just fine. His main argument for not capping the CEO pay packages is because “capping the pay of people brought in to lead wobbly companies back to health is a fine way to tell talented executives to look elsewhere for a job”. The other side of that argument is if they were that talented their companies would not be in a $700 billion predicament. The fact remains that it was the bad loans made in the housing boom that are at the core of this huge debacle. Then the question that should be posed is why isn’t the government looking into buying the mortgage debt and allowing these companies to fix their own mess? Mr. Krauthammer’s suggestion for appeasing the “mob”, or the citizens who are concerned about the spending of $700 billion of their tax money (I guess they’re interchangeable), is to have a few token CEO’s come on camera appearing guilty, sorry and reformed. Mr. Krauthammer even goes as far as suggesting that if they placed these employees on a reality TV show the advertisement fees alone would help pay for “the down payment” on the bailout. Assuming that the American public is ignorant and anything placed on the “boob tube” is enough to satiate even the angriest citizen is insulting. Ironic that in his column he did not mention that the Secretary of Treasury, Henry Paulson, was once the CEO for Goldman Sachs and that this very crucial bail out could have a direct positive effect on this company; so essentially tax payer money would be used to elevate Mr. Paulson’s former employer. Or that section 8 of his plan states “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” These issues are clear conflicts of interest and expecting congress to just sign over a blank check is just plain irresponsible.

*Krauthammer is a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, has earned a Pulitzer-Prize and is a regularly featured commentator on FOX news. He is generally conservative but takes a liberal stance on issues such as legalized abortion, stem cell research, the death penalty and intelligent design.