If (read this carefully, IF) General Motors, for any reason at all, ever defaults on making a payment, THE GAME IS OVER . . . PERIOD. It's over for GM, and it's over for me, and it's over for you. To translate this to the present crisis, if it defaults making a payment to a supplier, to employees, because it can't find anyone to buy its paper . . . repeat after me: "THE GAME IS OVER!"
Let's put this in another light. Your payday is Thursday. Today is Thursday. Your paycheck - say, $2,000, after all taxes, etc have been withheld - was supposed to have been deposited electronically that morning. On the way home, you stop at the grocery store, to pick up sufficient groceries for your family of four, to get you to Sunday, the day you normally visit the supermarket. It's been a long day. You don't relish traipsing up and down the isles, loading the shopping cart, just to wait in a long line. But you do because you have little choice - your family is hungry, and they're not used to not having something to eat.
Finally you've reached the checkout conveyor belt. You load the contents of the cart on the belt. The checkout clerk runs your groceries through the scanner; total: $62.75. As has been your habit, because you do not carry an excess of cash on your person, you swipe your debit card through the device . . .
"Card not recognized!"
With a growing line of impatient patrons behind you, you try it again: "Card not recognized!"
You don't understand. There should be at least $3,000 available; the $1,000 balance plus your paycheck. In addition to being tired, now you're embarrassed. Trying not to make a scene, you mutter to yourself, "What the hell," you'll try the Visa card. You pay the balance off every month and have a $5,000 line of credit. You then swipe that, only to get the same cold, impersonal message: "Card not recognized!"
For starters, that line of credit composes an offer by the credit card company. At any time it chooses, or needs to, it can refuse to make additional offers, which granting that $62.75 would be one. As to the money in your debit account . . . Sure, it's FDIC insured. Read the fine print, if you can locate the paper on which it's printed. Odds are you tossed it or lost it. But once you locate what it says, tell me . . . In a meltdown, what does it say as to specifically when the government will make good on that "Up to $100,000 insured"?
Now extend your micro problem to a national macro debacle. It's no longer just you, as bad as that would be, it's everyone!
Understand the preceding is not intended as either defense or support of any federal government bailout; seven dollars or $700,000,000,000. Or more . . . or, much more! Rather, this is an urgent request that folks not jack their jaws, venting, and spewing what is effectively nothing more than toxic sewage, or worse, odiferous gas out the rear sphincter.
One other critical component of whatever fix is reached. It's a pretty well established principle governing contracts that no outside party, which the US government certainly would be, may arbitrarily interject itself into an existing contractual relationship, and abrogate the terms of a legally negotiated legal contract so long as the original parties, or their assigns, remain extant.
Yeah, yeah, yeah - a lot of stuff has been left out, but it's the general idea concerning executive remuneration and what the federal government can do relative to it that I'm trying to illustrate. Picture this: You take a job selling carpet with Sears, and have signed an employment with the retailer that spells out what your compensation will consist of, and what you'll do in return for it. Let's also say that, for whatever reason, Sears agrees to pay you $100 per hour to be supplemented with an additional 10% commission, and that you will receive fully paid medical insurance, and it goes on and on. The only "performance" criteria concern bonuses, not the base salary and co0mmission structure. A pretty sweet deal. You signed the contract and a duly authorized representative of Sears signed the contract.
So long as you're holding up your end of the bargain, and so long as Sears does not seek protection from its creditors (of which, you are one) via one of the bankruptcy statutes, and so long as it remains in business, you don't care a whit how any other entity feels about your compensation structure: You agreed to it, the company agreed to it, and what else is there to discuss.
Too few read far enough into the Fifth Amendment and the provision that, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." However the clause most frequently pertains to the right of society to take privately owned realty for a public benefit (parks, roads, etc.), it is not restricted to realty. Personalty (aka "chattel") is property that is non-realty, not real estate, and consists of a wide variety of things an individual may own, including the right to a contractually agreed upon income or other remuneration. Although the government may assert some right to amend that contract and the income, whatever it may be, case law is strongly on the side of the plaintiff who claims he or she must be compensated "justly" should the government set in.
Whatever bailout scheme congress and the president agree upon, the last word(s) will be those within a federal court's majority opinion. And, whether you, or I like it is completely irrelevant.
Here's where I feel we are. We're the huddled group in uncharted territory. From off the horizon behind us appears an ominous, black storm of immense proportions. Before us is a body of water of unknown depth and breadth. Some of us cannot swim, some can, but none knows how far or for how long will be required, or what creatures inhabit its depths. If we continue the course we've set, the storm may overtake us and hurl us to doom, and yet it may also subside or turn away from us.
Doing nothing seems as poor an alternative as doing something.
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