Tag: Jenkins
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Madoff Hoped for Eventual Freedom
Bernie Madoff got the maximum sentence of 150 years in prison for stealing billions in what the judge called his “extraordinarily evil” Ponzi scheme. Probably it should now be renamed a Madoff scheme — Mr. Ponzi has been dead since 1949, and his take was denominated in mere millions. He was sentenced to only five […]
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Chrysler’s New Majority Owner Will Be The UAW. Yeah, That’ll Work.
I’ve been arguing for months that the government should not throw more bailout money at GM and Chrysler, but rather let them work out their problems in bankruptcy court. Filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection would give the companies more leverage to modify gold-plated benefits and ruinous work rules that add approximately $2,000 in costs […]
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Funny, He Doesn’t Sound Like a “Greedy Bastard”
I’ve held my tongue about the AIG bonuses because I haven’t had the energy to take on the torch-and-pitchfork brigades. But although I can understand the populist anger, and maybe even share it a bit, the frenzied response has turned me off since the day the story broke. Comes now an AIG executive named Jake […]
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Sorry, No Tears Here for Madoff’s Clients
(After learning more about Madoff’s victims, I recanted in a later post — KP) Apparently regulators ignored warning signs for more than a decade while Bernie Madoff stole and/or lost as much as $50 billion of his clients’ money. Holman Jenkins explains why we should not waste our sympathy on the clients: There are costs […]
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Congress May Have a Spine on Auto Bailout
Here’s why Congress ought to hold the line and refuse to bail out the automakers (emphasis added): Requiring car companies to meet corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards forces them to lose money on small cars that people don’t want so they can sell big cars that people do want, at least until gas prices […]
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Mr. Obama: Declare War on Rube Goldberg
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins identifies the key culprit in the current economic woes. It’s not Hank Paulson or Hank Greenberg or Stan O’Neal or even George Bush. The most formidable enemy of the American economy is Rube Goldberg. Jenkins starts by discussing the complex set of rules that have enabled autoworkers to […]