{"id":980,"date":"2009-03-20T05:57:58","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T13:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=980"},"modified":"2009-03-25T21:56:39","modified_gmt":"2009-03-26T05:56:39","slug":"because-90-tax-is-not-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/because-90-tax-is-not-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Because 90% tax is not enough"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The

Can't you hear the barking?<\/p><\/div>\n

Barney Frank says, “Heck, why not just eliminate all TARP recipient bonuses, period<\/a>.”\u00a0 Uh, because we want at least some return of the massive investment you forced us to make in these firms?<\/p>\n

But a zero bonus rule would be too simple.\u00a0 Congress doesn’t want to keep it simple because they’re afraid of getting outsmarted by the bankers, once again.\u00a0 So, like inept batters who keep swinging and missing, they’re simply pulling the backstop to the plate with a catch-all prohibition on “unreasonable and excessive” compensation.\u00a0 Or, to use a card analogy, this would be like handing themselves a trump card.\u00a0 In Tarot the trump card is represented by the Fool, which the French call “L’excuse,” as in “any excuse will do.”\u00a0 This is quite appropriate as we move toward French attitudes<\/a> about wealth creation.<\/p>\n

The market will reasonably interpret this bill, should it make it into law as: TARP = bankruptcy…why draw out the agony?\u00a0 Fair enough.\u00a0 But there are precedents being set here.<\/p>\n

Precedents like confiscating or eliminating all pay above a certain level would be bad enough.\u00a0 But precedents where the government gets to decide what is reasonable in broad compensation matters invites unlimited meddling, especially when reasonable is whatever Barney Frank thinks is reasonable.\u00a0 Is Barney Frank even capable of distinguishing reasonable?\u00a0 Isn’t reasonable kind of different from “driven purely in reaction to headlines of the moment that stoke raw, unchecked emotion?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barney Frank says, “Heck, why not just eliminate all TARP recipient bonuses, period.”\u00a0 Uh, because we want at least some return of the massive investment you forced us to make in these firms? But a zero bonus rule would be too simple.\u00a0 Congress doesn’t want to keep it simple because they’re afraid of getting outsmarted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collectivist-instinct","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980","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=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1029,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions\/1029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}