{"id":1037,"date":"2009-03-29T16:03:06","date_gmt":"2009-03-30T00:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=1037"},"modified":"2009-03-30T04:37:26","modified_gmt":"2009-03-30T12:37:26","slug":"mr-president-youre-confusing-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/mr-president-youre-confusing-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. President, you’re confusing me"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Obama talking to bank CEOs about bonuses<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Show some restraint.\u00a0 Show that you get that this is a crisis and everybody has to make sacrifices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That must have been a little confusing for many of the CEOs in that room.\u00a0 JP Morgan’s Dimon didn’t take any bonus.\u00a0 Morgan Stanley’s Mack didn’t get one, either, for the second year in a row.\u00a0 Citigroup’s Pandit didn’t get a bonus, although it’s difficult to consider how he could have justified one.\u00a0 Goldman Sach’s Blankfein didn’t take any bonus, plausibly leaving about $20 million on the table.<\/p>\n

In fact, President Obama, did anyone in the U.S. make a bigger sacrifice in dollar terms than Lloyd Blankfein?\u00a0 Did any one you know give back $20 million?\u00a0 Or any group that gave up the $200 million sacrificed by his peers<\/a>?\u00a0 Back in November, I suggested that the politicians would take credit for this sacrifice.\u00a0 I was wrong.\u00a0 They aren’t even acknowledging it.<\/p>\n

So, what sacrifices is Obama talking about, then?<\/p>\n

It’s very difficult for me as president to call on the American people to make sacrifices to help shore up the financial system if there’s no sense of mutual obligation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Funny, last I checked, the only people of whom President Obama was asking<\/a> sacrifices was the “wealthy.”\u00a0 The sacrifice he was asking them to make was to accept a higher taxes on their earnings.\u00a0 If he’s now asking the wealthy to accept lower earnings, isn’t he asking the rest of Americans to be making a sacrifice?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Obama talking to bank CEOs about bonuses: Show some restraint.\u00a0 Show that you get that this is a crisis and everybody has to make sacrifices. That must have been a little confusing for many of the CEOs in that room.\u00a0 JP Morgan’s Dimon didn’t take any bonus.\u00a0 Morgan Stanley’s Mack didn’t get one, either, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1037"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1042,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions\/1042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}