I do not believe in supporting bailouts without strong ramifications. It is a fool’s fantasy to think we can live in a globally connected economy and never have a situation arise where the government prudently steps in to prevent a failure that might lead to catastrophic ramifications. In most cases, I believe it would be much better to let bailed-out companies fail when they have mismanaged
themselves, rather than waste taxpayer money propping up greedy idiots who are trying to salvage their own bonuses; however, there are exceptions to almost every rule. The wiser course would be to penalize the CEO or board of directors who drove the company to the brink of failure. The most obvious punishment would be the elimination of any “golden parachutes” or bonuses for the executive and seizure of all company-derived assets, including any attempts to hide company assets in the spouse’s name. When C-level executives come to the realization that managing a company is not a game and that there are serious consequences for their actions, we will see fewer
instances of requests for bailouts.
