Citigroup was caught red-handed trying to buy a $50M Dassault Falcon 7X corporate jet and received a call from the White House to cancel that order. After all, it’s not the best way to spend billions of bailout money from the government. Columnists on the left are digging in their heels about this. Maureen Dowd at the NYT:
The former masters of the universe don’t seem to fully comprehend that their universe has crumbled and, thanks to them, so has ours. Real people are losing real jobs at Caterpillar, Home Depot and Sprint Nextel; these and other companies announced on Monday that they would cut more than 75,000 jobs in the U.S. and around the world, as consumer confidence and home prices swan-dived.
…
Bartiromo also asked Thain to explain, when jobs and salaries were being cut at his firm, how he could justify spending $1 million to renovate his office. As The Daily Beast and CNBC reported, big-ticket items included curtains for $28,000, a pair of chairs for $87,000, fabric for a “Roman Shade” for $11,000, Regency chairs for $24,000, six wall sconces for $2,700, a $13,000 chandelier in the private dining room and six dining chairs for $37,000, a “custom coffee table” for $16,000, an antique commode “on legs” for $35,000, and a $1,400 “parchment waste can.”
Okay, so maybe it was a poor decision made by Citigroup executives to buy a multimillion dollar jet after the taxpayers have funded the company. Maybe Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch, shouldn’t have spent so much on an office renovation.
On the other hand, the stimulus package in debate right now is about spending, isn’t it? The only difference between that bill and what these CEOs have done is who gets to spend. The Democrats prefers spending by the government, but that’s just an illusion because taxpayers foot the government spending. These Wall Street executives are also spending money buying merchandise, hiring contractors, etc. Isn’t that stimulating the economy?
