We're told that government doesn't need to interfere in matters economic. The market is great and will prevail (or something like that). That is, of course, until it might mean important people losing money.
The US government has found it necessary to take over the two big mortgage guarantors, which bear the cute, homely names "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac", which are normally not glossed even in the British press. Now, it could be argued that this doesn't make much difference; in both unlovely acronyms (FNMA and FHMC, since you don't ask) the F stands for "Federal". But, apparently, they weren't Federal until yesterday. What does this mean? That the people who run them were paying themselves enormous salaries on the grounds that they were commercial enterprises while not actually bearing any of the risk, perhaps? Perish the thought. And of course now they are government-run the bosses will go back to public-sector salaries? Well, of course they will.
Sounds rather like our own dear Northern Rock. Its bosses were lending stupidly, knowing that everybody else was risking their neck but that they themselves were risking bugger all, but they knew that the government couldn't let them swing in the wind as an electorally significant number of people would otherwise suffer. Well, any justification capitalism could possibly have rests on the risk-taking of entrepreneurs. This must mean that if things go tits up these people are on their bikes and living in a two-up-two-down terrace. Otherwise we'd be better off having everybody working for the State, drawing shit wages but doing sod all work for them. Less opportunity for disaster, and less hassle all round.
And no-one should ever forget; everyone on a high salary has got it by blagging and status-mongering, rather than by any conceivable version of market forces. And so no harm could ever be done to the wider economy by taxing them to buggery and beyond.
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