March 19, 2009

In My Opinion…

Howard Beale, step aside

By Carol Rosen
Editor

Remember the movie “Network?” In it the main character, Howard Beale, yelled non stop, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”

Well, there are a lot of people in this country that feel the same way right now on two fronts. First, they are griping because of the AIG bonuses that used $165 million of taxpayer monies and second, because of the $65 billion resting somewhere in the coffers of the Madoff family.

I know that people are “mad as hell” because every time I go out to do StreetTalk they tell me just how mad they are. And, they—unlike Congress—aren’t blaming the president, they are blaming these screwed-up money grabbers who take no responsibility for their actions and don’t have a conscience or a soul or even a modicum of guilt.

I’m no Pollyanna. I’ve told little white lies and maybe swiped some money from my mother’s purse, but I always felt guilty about it. In fact, in my younger days, I may have even sometimes padded my expense accounts for some petty cash, but again I felt guilty about it and early on decided that karma would get me and gave it up. I have a conscience.

But these people at AIG and the Madoff family obviously don’t even have a tiny little guilt gene. I’m wondering how they can sleep or look at themselves in the mirror. They have played with other people’s money to the extent that many have no gold for their golden years. There’s a man in Ben Lomond who had to go out and find work at the tender age of 93 so Bernie Madoff could live in a Manhattan penthouse. This guy should be home playing with his grandchildren or great grandchildren, not working at a grocery store because a thief wasn’t honest about the $700,000 investment this man made.

Oh sure, my mom always told me that I shouldn’t put all my eggs in one basket. And, while that’s true and some of these people should have known better, they didn’t and look where they are now. Even some of the brightest banks in the world were unaware of what the group at AIG was doing with their money. They had us all fooled.

It truly galls me that Madoff put all of his assets in his wife’s and children’s names, so that he didn’t have to give anything back. Of course he deserves prison, but more important, he needs to pay something back to the people that believed in him—especially the charities because they really need that money now. What kind of punishment is it for him to sit in a cell and read all day—make him literally pay his victims for what he’s done. Even if he doesn’t have a conscience, perhaps he can help out the people that do.

As for the bonus winners at AIG. I think they should give that money to the people who have lost their jobs or have had to take a steep pay cut in order to keep their jobs and may lose their homes. That $165 million would go a long way toward relieving some of the financial stress on homeowners who did their homework and are still struggling.

Make these #@@%&*@ people pay for what they have done and just maybe some people will think twice before trying it again.