There are few things worse than self righteous, sophomoric thinking pushed through a populist message. It has a way of catching fire and even sloppy reasoning when it is put in a way that sounds good can become part of the every-day consciousness. Downstream this can lead to poor decisions and bad policy. During this interview Jim is metaphorically wagging his judgmental finger in your face and talking down to you about your moral failings like a disappointed father... while pimping his book on TV for profit. Look Jim, either you get to preach to people about "values" and castigate them for their worship of money or you get to write a book and make money off of it. You can't do both.
I looked to see if Jim was donating the profits from his book to this-or-that charity and I wasn't able to find anything. And I don't mean just some of the profits, I mean all of them. Why, you ask? Well, if he can draw an arbitrary line in the sand for what constitutes a morally approved charity donation - well then so can I.
Look, if you want to give to the relief effort in Haiti, by all means, give. And don't think that I necessarily approve of all bonuses either. Graft is graft and waste is waste but... and this may come as a shock to people like Jim, bonuses serve a purpose in the workplace - even in banking. How much does Jim know about running a bank? Not much I'd guess. Not that that keeps him from running his yap about it. Worse, he dresses his pronouncements in a sort of quasi-religious, motherly-pat-on-the-knee folks-ism. I know what's best for your soul, Dear. Oh, and I wrote a book about it. Only $19.95!
While the interview is chock full of populist cliches I want to talk about a few specifics here. At a certain point in the interview, he says that the bonus money should be appropriated in some manner other than to give it to the people who... what's the word... oh, worked for it. His first idea is Haiti. As I explained above, first - we don't need people like you lecturing us like children, and second - you first. Third, Jim has no idea what percentage of their income these bonuses constitute. In a sales position it is entirely possible to have a very significant portion of your income - that you rely on to, you know, feed your family - come in the form of "bonuses". Jim has no idea what these people do for a living, how specialized their particular skills are, how hard or long or smart they work, in what manner banks structure their pay to increase productivity, or how much they might (or might not) deserve to be compensated. He knows absolutely nothing about them. Except that they should give their money away. And Jim will be right there to morally bully them into doing the right thing. It's for the common good, you know. Fourth, a considerable percentage of this money will actually go back to one level of government or another. Before you blow that off, consider that both the Mayor of NYC and the Governor of New York have made comments opposing any sort of retro-active penalty, tax, or fee against these banks or persons. Why? Because NYC and the great state of New York tax the crap out of their citizens, especially high income ones, and they stand to collect a great deal from these bonuses. Mayor Bloomberg had this to say after the idea of keeping the bonuses in escrow was bandied about:
The mayor was so upset about the move -- and a suggestion that Wall Street bonuses be put in escrow, which means the money wouldn't be spent here, wouldn't help the city economy -- he responded with a proposal of his own for members of Congress.
"Maybe we should hold back their salaries for a decade or so and see whether the laws they pass work out," Bloomberg said.
Food for thought, that.
Jim's second idea is that we use that $150 billion dollars to pay the deficit of the various States in the Union. Let it be known: we already do this. The federal government subsidizes the state budgets in all manner of ways. Name most any service that a State provides and you'll find a Federal dollar somewhere on the balance sheet for that service. Texas, for example, gets about 31% of it's revenue from the Federal Government. Wisconsin famously halted its plans to lower the drinking age to 19 - only for military service members - because the Feds would pull about $30 million in highway funds. The States already receive too much money from the Federal Government and are restricted and regulated correspondingly. There is no free lunch - and no Federal dollars without strings. Even if Jim means we should give to the States above and beyond what we already do, we wouldn't exactly be encouraging future fiscal responsibility by our State Governments if we bail them out after their spending bonanzas. Kinda like the banks...
What's that you say, this is exactly what we already did with the stimulus bill? Oh, that $787 billion monstrosity? Here's the full title:
An act making supplemental appropriations for job preservation and creation, infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and science, assistance to the unemployed, and State and local fiscal stabilization, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, and for other purposes.
Jim, your indignance was only about a year late. The States already got their billions.
His next idea is to use this money to "prevent mortgage foreclosures all the way through 2012". For the sake of discussion, I will assume that Jim has not developed the ability to see into the future and he is just speculating and using some formulation of projected mortgage foreclosure rates over the next two years. The reader that hasn't been in a coma for the past couple years will note the considerable lack of success recently in the arena of projecting said mortgage failure rates by people way more experienced and much smarter than Jim - but hey, we'll just let it slide and assume it to be true. No opportunity for graft or waste in a program like that, I daresay. And certainly pushing billions into the housing market in such a manner won't alter people's behavior in any way. Nah. I'm sure people, being the noble and altruistic beings that they are, will continue doing the right thing and go on paying that mortgage even though there's billions of dollars sitting around to "prevent" them from foreclosing on their house.
Mmm, what's that you say? There already is a $75 billion mortgage foreclosure prevention program? What the deuce!?
He does say one thing that I agree with him on. He derides the "too big to fail" line by banks and other financial organizations and says we should make them smaller. I agree completely; if your organization is so big that its failure will cause country sized collapses in the financial markets - then you need to be cut down.
Jim gives "greed" a good solid B+, populist bashing in the interview. In the interest of fairness I offer a counterpoint, Stossel: Greed is good. And more here on greed by Stossel, in video! (An excellent 6 part ABC special - watch this)
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