Bob McCarty Writes

While many fear Tuesday’s election could launch Barack Obama’s much-talked-about plan to redistribute the wealth, an Oct. 29 report in The Nation suggests that the redistribution has already begun:

The swindle of American taxpayers is proceeding more or less in broad daylight, as the unwitting voters are preoccupied with the national election. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson agreed to invest $125 billion in the nine largest banks, including $10 billion for Goldman Sachs, his old firm. But, if you look more closely at Paulson’s transaction, the taxpayers were taken for a ride–a very expensive ride. They paid $125 billion for bank stock that a private investor could purchase for $62.5 billion. That means half of the public’s money was a straight-out gift to Wall Street, for which taxpayers got nothing in return.

Incredibly, much of the credit for bringing this matter to light goes to United Steelworkers’ Leo W. Gerard, according to a Marketwatch report five days ago.  The USW president sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson earlier that day and also penned an article on his union’s web site.

After reading both the letter and the article, I wish I could say I’m willing to take back everything negative I’ve ever said about labor unions, but I can’t.  The management-is-bad, labor’s-being-cheated rhetoric on the part of the labor union boss hangs too thick in this virtual reading room.  Still, because politics, sometimes creates strange bedfellows, I find myself in agreement with Gerard on three key points:

• The current bailout plan needs to be reworked;

• Taxpayers should not be stuck with a deal that pays the nation’s nine largest banks double the going rate; and

• Secretary Paulson et al responsible for this deal are “scoundrels who have laid waste to the American Dream.”

Hat tip:  Merry Roloff