Monday, March 16, 2009

Galt

These idiots who speak of "going Galt" have evidently missed just who and what John Galt represents.

First, he's no a middle manager type who makes about an annual quarter mil. If that is what people are taking away from a reading of Atlas Shrugged they are hopelessly illiterate.

Now if you managed an incredible green feat like the fictional John Galt, more likely your income would be in the billions, like Bill Gates. Leaving the specific feat aside, Galt had invented something world-changing, and then he hid it, quit his job rather than give said invention away, and started on a course of creating an inventors, movers and shakers union.

The contemporary creatures who speak of "going Galt" have nothing of impressive scale to withdraw from the workplace or the marketplace, and have no intention of organizing those who most benefit the world into going on strike.

What they are doing is having a temper tantrum, and my reaction is to tell them not to let the doorknob hit them. With unemployment riding so high, they can be replaced more easily than they know. Might be nice to let them find this out the hard way.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Defining Bottom

"Our job, as we see it, is getting the best return on our investments for our stockholders."

Those were the words from a bank that has taken bailout money and invested it overseas -- maybe Dubai, maybe another place -- but the basic thing is that it was anyplace but here.

Foreign banks and economies other than ours are being bailed out. Meanwhile, people are still losing their jobs and their homes at a high rate.

Are we "stockholders"? Are the wealthy still getting richer from our resources -- doing so from principal that was loaned out of the pockets of people whose lives are going down the crapper?

Their job, as we see it, should be untangling the snarled mess of bundled debt and the assuming of responsibility to those who are floating them loans involuntarily -- not to those with enough excess cash to set it out there for raking benefits off money that belongs to others.

Bailout funds should not be going overseas. It's time for that overlooked oversight to come online, before bailout money has disappeared without a trace.