A Piece of the Pie

I received an email today asking me why I haven’t written a Blog in the past 7 days. The underlying question was about my health issues, not about my Blog. This time my health problems are not of a physical nature.

I’ve been enduring a horrible domestic situation for the past week. It has been beyond my scope of imagination. The stress factor has become overwhelming. In addition, the financial news has been driving me to the edge of insanity (a short drive).

I have unsuccessfully attempted to stop reading the daily news.

Back in my school daze they always used a pie to demonstrate how the Federal Government allocated our tax dollars. Some pies are broken into as few as 5 sectors of the Economy, while others delved deeper, basically know as sub-sectors. There are also pies for GNP, GND (AKA GFD) as well as many other individual sectors of our economy. I’m sick to near death at looking at the current pies.

Now the Auto makers want a piece of the bailout money. Only $25 Billion, a mere drop in the bucket, compared to the $800 Billion plus bailouts. Everyone now wants a piece of the pie

Let’s take GM for example. G. R. Wagoner, Jr. GM Chairman & CEO whose compensation was $14,415,914 in 2007 and who knows what he’ll earn in 2008. Then there is R. A. Lutz, Vice Chairman, Global Product Development, who was compensated $6,894,024 in 2007.

Now let’s drop a comma. I could live a life of luxury on $415,914 or better yet $894,024 per year. Deferring their salaries down to reasonable levels would save GM $20 million per year. A condition of a bailout to any company should require the top compensated person in the company to make less than $500,000.

Think about it, if you can’t live on a half million dollars a year you have a major drug problem.

To hell with the corporate bailouts! Let’s try to bailout the people who really need to be bailed out. Those are the people who were conned into massive debt attempting to attain the American Dream; home ownership. And now due to the economy, they are facing foreclosure. If they received the money instead of the financial institutions and the big corporations, they would spend it more wisely. But these monies would only be given to people that lived in their homes and not the real estate speculators and investors (they deserve to lose their ass).

This all reminds me of the mid 1970’s movie Network, starring Peter Finch as a News Anchor who lost it all when he was told that he was he was losing his job due to low ratings. He was losing everything that mattered to him.

This is the way many people feel now.

From IMDB:

“I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – “I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!” Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad! You've got to say, I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore! Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:
I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

We should feel this way and shout:
I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!

It’s doubtful that any of the “Powers that Be” will listen, but at least we got it off our chests.

The Beach Bum