Grassley to AIG: Less suicide, more groveling
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) caused a stir with a Monday interview in which he suggested that he wanted AIG executives to apologize — or kill themselves.
He elaborated in a conference call with Iowa reporters this morning, and said he was thinking less about ritual suicide and more about a little kowtowing to taxpayers. You can listen for yourself here.
Said Grassley:
“What I’m expressing here, obviously, is not that I want people to commit suicide. That’s not my notion. But I do feel very strongly that we have not had statements of apology, statements of remorse, statements of contrituion on the part of CEOs, the manufacturing companies, or banks or financial services or insurance companies that are asking for bailouts — that they understand that they are responsible for running their corporation into the ground. And now they’re coming to the taxpayers for help.
“And have been coming to the taxpayers for help for the last six months. It’s very difficult for the American people to understand the justification for it. And one thing that would help with the justification is if these executives would make an apology. Other societies accept this.
“And I’ve seen other writers write about what the Japanese do. And Japanese CEOs either go out and commit suicide — and probably in most cases they don’t, and when they don’t, they come before the public and bow very, very deeply, and express regret and may resign or may stay on.
“But the point is they accept full responsibility. And the entire society knows they accept full responsibility, and I haven’t heard this from these CEOs. And it just makes it difficult for the taxpayers of my district to keep shoveling money out the door to people who don’t show the proper appreciation.”
The Republican said he thought entirely proper that President Barack Obama try to retrieve taxpayer money spent on bonuses for AIG officials, news of which started this latest round of outrage.
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© 2009 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
4 comments Add your comment
Copyleft
March 17th, 2009
2:19 pm
What Grassley’s talking about is restoring a sense of SHAME to those who have ignored their duty to the public. For too long we’ve had the absurd notion that corporations and their executives owe NOTHING to anyone but the stockholders.
That won’t fly any longer. Corporate executives have been opportunistic hogs and looters, destroying lives with their reckless greed. And it’s time to put them in stocks and start throwing tomatoes, to signal that this sort of unchecked excess is no longer acceptable.
String ‘em up!
RGB
March 17th, 2009
11:08 pm
Senator Grassley joined the cacophony of Democrat windbags seeking to draw attention away from their reckless multi-trillion dollars of expenditures by the Democrat House and Democrat Senate. Grassley should take a dose of his own medicine before prescribing his curative potions to those in the private sector.
If you believe the AIG execs should be strung up, then you should first string up the chOsen One along with Reid, Pelosi, Schumer, Dodd, Frank, and other moral miscreants called Democrats. And take a few Republicans along with you for good measure. These people committed acts much worse than AIG in both scope and degree….and have for years.
Senator, cure thyself.
Copyleft
March 18th, 2009
8:28 am
True, there have been many wrongful acts in Congress over the past few years (and decades)… mostly revolving around doing favors lobbyists and corporate donors, creating “loopholes” and custom legislation in their favor, deregulating them, etc.
Plenty of blame to go around. But given the economic crisis, first priority has to be dismantling the foolishness of laissez-faire and re-establishing that the market is accountable to the public.
Bluebird
March 18th, 2009
10:49 am
Actually Grassley was right on and he shouldn’t have retracted or apologized for his statment. These people are pigs who don’t deserve a dime. We the American people should have let all of the companies asking for bailouts fail. “Everytime you reward failure you get more failure”: Newt Ginrich. Why don’t we let capitalism work for us? If these companies put out a bad product(GM) or they have flawed buisness practices and buisness plans they deserve to fail.