To me one of the problems with our system is that CEOs and Director Boards only answer to their stockholders, and are only interested in increasing stockholders' investments. It seems to me that corporations should have the good of the country or at least their own communities as a part of their interests. When the CEO and the corporation fails, so does everyone around them.
Absolutely, and the bigger part of that is that they did not even answer in the best interests of their stockholders/stakeholders. I agree with you that the community /nation is who they need to answer to both ST and LT. Because at the end of the day, the community is who invests in the company. First, as consumers, when we buy their products and services, those are the very profits that make the stock prices gain for the ST. These people stuck it to their customers on the front end with ridiculous prices/inflation. Second, as investors, the community invests, not only thru the stock market in a ST or LT investment purchase of stocks, but we also invest in these corporations thru a company retirement investing program with 401-k's and 403-b's for the LT.. In the end their investors got hosed on the front end and back end of all of this. We paid higher prices for everything at the front end. We paid for it again when it crashed in the form of bailouts and we've paid for it as well as the values of homes and retirement savings have dropped. And it's still not over, as those that were bailed out, they're going to bring new shell games that we'll have to pay even more for, so that the bailed out corporations can pay back those loans with interest. Faith in the system, sorry but I have very little at this point if I ever had any at all. Now, if I were one of the one's on the gravy train of all of this, perhaps I'd be enamored with it more, even singing a different tune ? But the only thing I can see is that we were lied to and forced to comply with those inflated prices on the front end, and as it turned to sh*t, like everyone knew it would, been paying for it every step of the way and will be going forward, until someone declares that the obligation has been satisfied. And after investing roughly $ 6,000 per taxpayer, I really need to ask these questions ? Where are our shares in these corporations ? What portion of the interest will any of us get ? What rate of return is anyone getting out of this ? The US govt. owes us at least this much. Make these corporations issue every tax payer on record common shares of stock and then when they're ready to retire that obligation, they need to pay each of us back and include a rate of return. That's how the system has always worked, not this corporate welfare bullsh*t The way it's structured, the taxpayer looks like they are worse at/for investing thru a bailout. If that means scaling back incomes on Wall Street and the NYSE and global markets, so be it. If it takes a year, 2, 3, 4, 10 or 20 years, so be it. A long time ago I heard someone say it for the first time. Choose a profession you enjoy, something you'd do for free, well it's time Wall Street and the rest of these people got their chance to practice what they preached. They had their prosperous times and now it's time to ply theuir trade, even if they break even for the next few years. they won when it was great and now they have to lose when it sucks ? Because that's exactly where the rest of us have been there and done that. Time to spread the misery in the way the game was intended to be played, as a risk/reward game.