Hold the Mayo

March 25, 2009

Who Is Jake DeSantis?

He is the AIG executive who shrugged.

If you have struggled trying to understand the ideas of Ayn Rand and why the sales of her novel Atlas Shrugged have surged; if you have picked up the book and struggled through the John Galt speech read Jake Desantis's resignation letter.

I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

NOTE: I would offer a hat tip to where I saw this first, but I have seen it on so may sites I can't remember where I saw it first.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 11:45 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment

take a look at this rollingstone article on AIG and the meltdown;

www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover/print

Posted by: chuck at March 25, 2009 02:29 PM (V3OLq)

2 Chuck, Nice leftist rant that! I don't have a lot of qualms with the deregulation. I noticed that Rolling Stone didn't mention the Community Reinvestment Act and other government regulations pushing banks to give loans to unqualified buyers that were the other part of the Credit Default Swap meltdown. I have serious qualms with these institutions being bailed out and not facing the full consequences of their poor business decisions.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at March 25, 2009 03:58 PM (UquFN)

3 If you are going to have a capitalist system, which we don't, risk is supposed to keep greed in check. When risk is eliminated, as in bailouts for bad actors (who happen to be politically connected), unlimited greed and corruption is the result. This is called mercantilism or fascism, not capitalism. If you're going to bail out anyone, bail out the bank depositors allowing them to take their money to a bank which made good decisions during the bubble boom. Instead we have zombie banks competing with sound, solvent banks. Why would we want to weaken good banks by allowing the gov't sponsored zombies to undercut them? We should also remember that derivatives were created in part to get around regulations by duping the regulators. Derivatives can be so complex that regulators had to believe what the banks were telling them. Pretty cool, aye? For a clearer picture of the situation, I would recommend that people read "Meltdown" by Thomas Woods.

Posted by: Wayne at March 25, 2009 05:28 PM (IGF0m)

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