Friday, October 17, 2008

I don't get it

Evidently, the guy hired by Hank Paulson to dole out the $700 billion (or $850 billion, or $1 trillion, or whatever) bailout is also a former executive of Goldman Sachs. The man may be a genius, but all I can see is how he helped take his employer nearly to Chapter 7. As such, it's unclear to me why I ought to trust him with a hot dog stand, let alone with a bailout plan that could either rescue or wreck our economy.

It's really one of my persistent pet peeves; executives take their company to Chapter 11 or 7, and promptly get hired in another executive position, often one with more responsibility and pay. What ever happened to telling a man "Bob, you're very talented, but you took your last company down the toilet. It's time for you to re-start a few levels down."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Wall Street bailout was nothing more than trying to pay the piper with counterfeit Monopoly money. One day the piper is going to be back, and he's going to be very angry.

Bike Bubba said...

NW, I'd be interested to see more of your take on this. As someone working in financial services (do I remember right?), you've got to have some very interesting conversations with colleagues on either side of this issue.