Lee Iacocca Understood Bailouts

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It seems that the collective memory of the public, elected officials, writers, businessmen et al, must be subject to dementia. Lee Iacocca and Chrysler borrowed a ton of money from the gov't in 1979 (?) and paid it back. The gov't actually MADE MILLIONS of dollars on that deal. Why anyone would offer up the 'CONRAIL' project for automakers when the previous Chrysler bailout is available for EXACT comparison is beyond me !

Ken Rubino of NY 7:29AM March 16, 2009

There is no real reason for any bank president to be making more than $500,000.
We're yelling about it now because taxpayer money is involved. But depositors' money and shareholders' money is ALWAYS involved.
Time to scale back the CEO expectations, and scale them back just as far as workers are told to diminish theirs. The way to do this is high marginal income tax rates of old. Try 60% on incomes over a million.
That will fix your excesses and never should have been abandoned in the first place.
But the "talent" (talent at shortchanging investors and workers) will move elsewhere, they cry. YES, I say, that's the point.

Muser of NM 10:12AM February 05, 2009