You know those companies that used their huge corporate tax cuts to buy back stock?

[Tom Rinaldo]

Forget about safeguards against them doing it again with bailout money. Penalize them now for their actions first before they get a single dime from any so called "stimulus measure." If they bought stock back on the market, they can bloody well sell stock back to the market to raise money. The market crashed and prices are "soft"? Tough you know what. The market was below its peak when they bought back that stock anyway.

OK,I get that they may need some "incentive" in order to do the right thing with money raised by selling back their bonanza buyback stock now. Fine. If they sell that stock now and use the money they get from the sale to pay their employees whether or not they are able to come to work, then and only then let them apply for "matching" bailout funds to save themselves from going under. And none of that can be used for future "stock buybacks", period.

The airlines are a good place to start. They funneled billions into stock buybacks from their huge tax cuts. Let them raise one dollar for their employees through stock sales for every dollar that they come begging to Uncle Sam for. And if somewhere out there some corporation is in trouble now that did the right thing with their tax cuts and reinvested it into improving their companies and making life better for their workers, well they won't have to sell stock now in order to apply for bailout funds. But I doubt there are many large firms that would qualify for that.

[delisen]

1. Do uou know of any company that did the right thing

If we could identify such a company some investors may choose to buy their stock now.

[Tom Rinaldo]

2. I don't, no

It's a big country, I suppose there could be a few, and if so, maybe they deserve some recognition and even support. I wouldn't be one to know which they might be though.

[Chainfire]

3. Corporations always do the right thing

The right thing for a corporation is to make money for the shareholders. They have no hearts, no souls, no honor or no ethics and no other mission than making money. When they get caught violating laws, they pay back a small part of what they stole, give the directors bonuses and continue to do crooked business. When is the last time you remember a CEO going to jail for crimes he ordered or condoned? That is our system, we have been suckered into believing that the way it is done today is the only way it can be done.

If it were really a free market, the corporations that failed to plan for emergencies, would fail, period. The shareholders would lose their gamble (and their money) and the assets of the company would be redistributed to others who might do a better job of running the company. The product demand would not stop so there would be people waiting in the wings with a better mousetrap that would be recruiting the old employees.

Look at Boeing. These crooks built an airplane that was so bad that they can't make them airworthy. Instead of admitting that they screwed up, they killed two plane loads of passengers. Now, they want the taxpayers to bail their sorry asses out. They want us to assume all of their liability when they fail. They want to act like the Trump virus it the cause of their problems and anyone with a brain knows that is total bullshit. I would't give them the sweat of of Trumps nasty nuts.

If they are too big to fail, they need to be broken up into smaller, safer pieces that can swim or drown on their own without taking society down with them. The theory that some businesses are too big to fail should be tested and this would be a good time. Of course, since big business controls big money and politicians need their big money to hold big offices, nothing will change short of a cultural and economic revolution, and we are too fat and dumb to take our pitchforks to the streets and demand justice for ourselves.

People sometimes lose sight of the fact that the bankers, the brokers, the investors do not make a damn thing, they create no wealth. The simply redistribute the real wealth that is produced by the man an woman on the assembly line,or on the tractor, or driving the truck. All of the people who perform the magic of banking and finance are the parasites of our society, albeit, very rich and very powerful parasites.

[Tom Rinaldo]

4. Fully agree with you

The Democratic Party slid so far right over the decades since FDR's New Deal.

I was trying to think of some proposal that actually had a shadow of a chance of actually passing.