In the corporate world you pay when you fail to perform. The oil leak was on Tony Hayward’s watch. He failed to measure up to his promise of laser attention on safety. Then, he failed to demonstrate the leadership required of the CEO job. He did not do and say the right things to give people the impression that he was making the Gulf oil leak top priority and had appropriate empathy for the people who were harmed by the act. He deserved to be fired, and he was. It’s easy to say he walked away with millions, so who cares? He cares. He worked his way to the top of a huge corporation and leaves in disgrace. He would give most of those millions back to have the oil leak erased.
In the world of US politics, you do worse than Tony Hayward did and you suffer no consequences. No one did more to destroy the US economy than Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. Dodd is retiring rather than suffer a defeat in the November elections. Barney will be reelected and go on with his mischief. Both proudly stood behind President Obama when the signed the abortion of a Financial Reform Act into law. Smug as peacocks. The Financial Reform Act that ignores Freddie and Fannie like they don’t exist.
Dodd and Frank supported Freddie and Fannie to the end and beyond. Without these two organizations there would not have been a housing meltdown. Taxpayers have dumped over $100 billion into these two organizations to cover up their mistakes. The men who ran Freddie and Fannie into the ground walked away with millions in bonus payments, but the AIG people got the public attention. They still sit on billions in bad mortgages and the bailouts for them are not over.
Who are Dodd and Frank kidding. They should have been fired for far more reasons than Tony Hayward. They kept Freddie and Fannie out of Financial Reform because they want the Freddie and Fannie problems kept under the rug. They don’t intend to answer to anyone for their culpability in the mess. They don’t want reform in Freddie and Fannie because they want them to keep doling out mortgages to people who can’t pay. They still believe home ownership is an American right.
Will either Dodd or Frank ever face justice for their injustice to the US taxpayer? Will they even have to answer to the media for their failures?
In a media culture where 400 high-level journalists were sharing e-mails on how to get Obama elected during the campaign, it can’t happen. If you were a TV producer or a newspaper editor, would you fire a journalist in your employ who was blatantly using his job to promote his political ideology? Have any of the 400 been fired for participating in the little cartel to elect Obama? None that I’ve read about?
In the private sector, you mess up, you get fired. In the government, you mess up, nothing happens. In the media world, you mess up, nothing happens.
