Brain Drain or You Got to be Kidding

Brain Drain Blues

In debating the President’s economic recovery package, specifically the limit on compensation for executives, the Repubs are getting a little touchy. Sen. Claire McCaskill said the financial executives just don’t get it. “It’s like they are kicking sand in the face of the American people,” said Sen. McCaskill when referring to the continued extravagance in the boardrooms of the ‘big money’ recipients of the previous TARP funds and the hat in hand beggars now soliciting more ‘Bail Out’ money from the government.

Just a day after the President suggested a paltry $500,000.00 per year cap on the executives of companies taking our money to get their companies out of hock, the ‘trickle down’ boys began to squeal like stuck pigs. I’m sure the faxes, e-mails and lobbying buddies were covering the old money politicians like one of those new ‘Snugglies’ we see daily advertised on T.V. Most every imaginable excuse is now being made to avoid such common sense legislation. I think the dumbest is the one made by the former President of Merrill, Lynch, the guy whose reason for spending $1,250,000.00 to redecorate his office, while his company lost 20 Billion dollars in the last quarter of last year, was because he just didn’t feel like he could work in the old place. This genius actually told a live reporter on a network show he felt he had to pay the year end bonuses for his company, which amounted to over a billion dollars, because if he did not he was going to lose his good people. Good people! What part of losing 20 billion dollars does this fool not understand? Right this minute, I can get in my car and drive across town to the sale barn and put together a group of Mexican farm workers, not the farm owners but the illegal’s that can not speak English, and live twelve to a two bedroom trailer and together we can’t lose 20 BILLION DOLLARS in a year, much less a quarter. If I could gather the actual farmers and throw in my barber Vic, we could maybe make at least a couple of percentage points or at least make more than we making now and have a little left over for the investors.

One insider that agreed with the President on the limitations suggested that big time executives might even be required to qualify for their pay in the same manner that unemployment compensation recipients do. That is they must prove that they are working a minimum of 40 hours per week on the job. They could not count the time they spent reading the Wall Street Journal or commuting in company cars with paid drivers or flying in company air craft. That each company should be required to charge for meals in executive dining rooms and that outside executive meals be limited to a set per diem as is the case for other government employees until all government money is repaid. He noted that full control over the affairs of the company be returned to its Board and Executives as soon as all the government money is repaid and the company is operating on it own. The response to this has been strong. It is unheard of, the panic mentality abounds that we would be risking the loss of the geniuses of the financial world. "It's a leap, because the executive at the bank is a free agent who can leave the bank and go to work someplace else," said Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) of the welfare comparison. "You run the risk of having a brain drain at the bank of their top talent." Lord forbid us having a brain drain in our financial world. Where are they going? I can just hear a potential employer now asking during the interview portion of the hiring process, “why’d you leave your last job Mr. member of the brain drain”? “Oh, I lost the company 20 Billion last quarter and they wanted to cut my pay to a mere $500,000.00 next year and I just can’t live on that,” Brain Drain would reply. We’ve already lost the genius of George W. in the White House, Donald Rumsfield in the Pentagon. If this happen the only thing holding this nation together would be Bill O’Rielly and Rush Limbaugh and it is doubtful the the two of them could prevail against hords of common citizens that would like to see this nation work the way it was designed to work. For the people and by the people.

God save our nation from the great brain drain of smart people that have governed our country and its markets for the last eight years.