Friday, May 29, 2009

We Don't Need No Stinking Law

"The rule of law, not of men--an ideal tracing back to the ancient Greeks and well-known to our Founding Fathers--is the animating principle of the American experiment. ... Fleecing lenders to pay off politically powerful interests, or governmental threats to reputation and business from a failure to toe a political line? We might expect this behavior from a Hugo Chavez. But it would never happen here, right? Until Chrysler. ... Violating absolute priority undermines this commitment by introducing questions of redistribution into the process. It enables the rights of senior creditors to be plundered to benefit the rights of junior creditors. ... The value of the rule of law is not merely a matter of economic efficiency. It also provides a bulwark against arbitrary government action taken at the behest of politically influential interests at the expense of the politically unpopular", my emphasis, Todd Zywicki (TZ) at the WSJ, 13 May 2009.

TZ, George Mason law professor, nothing is new here. Look at the 1930s "gold clause" cases. Or Sandra Day O'Connor's "jurisprudence". Harvard Law grad, POTUS Obama is taking us to fascism. How many hundreds of billions did the Fed pass out to "politically powerful interests"? YS has a related 12 May 2009 post at her Naked Capitalism, link: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/05/federal-reserve-inspector-general.html. The Fed's Coleman is as much a general as the Modern Major General, my 25 August 2008 post: http://skepticaltexascpa.blogspot.com/2008/08/new-army-career-path.html.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I had seen the Fed's IG "testify"... her lack of effort stinks... she was beyond clueless...

As I was watching her I was thinking who has oversight over collateral? Has she any idea about Maiden Lane or other trash heaps that the Fed onboarded in an effort to keep the primary dealer system from falling to the bottom of the sea...? no she is window dressing... and an affront to us because she inspects nothing.

Where is that "transparency" they've been touting?