Who Wants to Be a (Self-Sacrificing, Heroic) Millionaire?

I was at an airport gate yesterday with a bunch of other recessionists who'd been enticed to travel by Virgin America's dirt-cheap cross-country web fare, all of us listening to a CNN commentator gripe about destitute banking concerns that plan to use a chunk of our taxpayer bailout to pay out multi-millions in annual bonuses.

If there were ever a right moment for earmarked money, this might have been it. Didn't anyone in the Treasury department think to say here, we're going to bail you out, but you're supposed to use this money to make credit more available and jump-start the engine of capitalism? Enabling a handful of money guys and gals to buy a bargain condo or that Rolex/Hermes/watch/bag/whatever they've been yearning for does not exactly qualify as a jump-start -- but the checks seem to have been cashed and the bad intentions announced, so it's a bit late for restrictions.

Perhaps the government thought that the altruists who run Wall Street would do the right thing without instruction. So here's the call: All we need is a single, solitary financial sort who's troubled, late at night, about making a million -- or multi-million-dollar deposit when people are losing their homes, their jobs, the very retirement accounts that those financial wizards managed right into the unregulated ground.

That's it: One heroic rich professional who sees a disconnect between the consequences of Wall Street's behavior and getting a big fat prize at the end of the year, the sort of person who would have trouble watching a story about bankrupt food banks on his brand-new gazillion-inch flat-screen television. The one who might take note of the line I walked past in New York last week -- over 100 people waiting to fill out job applications at a new restaurant, -- despite the privacy tint on the windows of his new BMW.

Step up, honorable investment person, and hand back the money , and then exhort your colleagues to do the same. Start a revolution. Dare I say it, given some of the recent campaign rhetoric: Insist on a redistribution of wealth.

We're supposed to get rewards when things go well, after all. Things are not going well. Since I don't really expect anyone to step forward, any time soon, perhaps we could at least get the names of the lucky winners, so that we can avoid them on that glorious day when we again have some spare cash to set aside.

Comments

[LarryD]

I think the guys from Goldman Sachs who just renounced their bonuses were looking over your shoulder as you wrote this. Let's see who follows suit.

[DBWAlobama]

Kudos, Karen! Well said. It's a crying shame there are no such "heroes".

The day of the original bailout approval, there was a clip on the news showing Bush and Paulson walking together. I told my husband then that they were entirely too jovial...t­hat both were laughing too much, even tho they were pleased about the package being passed. It just wasn't appropriate for them to be so happy given the circumstan­ces...made me wonder if they were so happy because they were saving their own investments. I had a very bad feeling.