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closeScoop du jour: Like a bad cliché, we didn’t see that coming
George Le Masurier
They say what goes around, comes around so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that every manipulating top financial executive who’s responsible for the current economic crisis gets what’s coming to them.
These flying high investment banker and savings and loan CEOs have laughed all the way to the bank, making money hand over fist, while the bottom fell out of the market leaving many good folks without a penny to their name.
Why should home-owners, albeit the naïve ones, who were honest as the day is long get cleaned out and headed to the poor house, while these corporate fast guys cashed in their chips before they broke the bank?
Many of the money grubbers were born with silver spoons in their mouths and probably have no idea that money doesn’t grow on trees. They made sweet deals by sweetening the pot for themselves and rolled in the dough, while their employees and investors and now all the rest of us get taken for a ride.
Most of these gold diggers thought money could buy them happiness but when push came to shove and their companies went belly up, they were like frogs in a frying pan. At the eleventh hour, when they finally realized time was running out and the times were a changing, they greased a few palms and bit the hands that fed them without a care in the world.
The rest of us know that big business is a dog-eat-dog world, but we still find it hard to swallow when the bosses pull the wool over your eyes, like a rug and leave you without two nickels to rub together. Now, elderly investors who are as fine as wine if a little long in the tooth, are on a shoestring budget with no home to bring the bacon to.
When the 800-pound gorilla has cooked up a cock and bull story about building a better mousetrap that will almost certainly become a cash cow, you believe that you’re just two shakes of a lamb’s tail from making a quick buck. If you don’t swim with the sharks every day how could you spot a Trojan horse?
What’s good for the goose, should be good for the gander.
Who wouldn’t grab for the carrot dangled in front of you? It might seem like small potatoes to the Big Cheese, but how many times do you get to pick the low-hanging fruit? Of course, everyone should know there’s no free lunch and money doesn’t grow on trees, but we can still hope for our just desserts.
Those who live by the sword die by the sword, so when the fat lady sings, we’ll see who gets the last word. When it’s all over but the crying and every last-ditch effort has bought the farm, I have my fingers crossed that, hope against hope, some judge or the next president throws them a curve ball and they’re forced to throw in the towel.
Maybe they’ll learn it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. You play for the name on the front of your jersey, not the one on the back.
I don’t think those bankers who got us into this mess stand a prayer because they already have one foot on the banana peel and the other in the grave. Let’s see them think outside the box now when it really is do or die.
Fixing our broken economy is better late than never and can’t come too soon to be in the nick of time. There’s no time like the present to send a clear message we aren’t going to take it anymore.
At the end of the day, we can only hope that all’s well that ends well. When those who got us into this financial pickle are wrapped up with the old ball and chain, we’ll be whistlin’ Dixie. He who laughs last, laughs best.