Almost unheard of in previous downturns…good luck Bogwad.

Now that its veracity appears to have been confirmed, what’s your (sober) overall take on it?

Disclaimer: wasn’t suggesting that you had been imbibing adult beverages when you replied, what I meant was with the benefit of elapsed time ‘tween then and now, have you any additional perspectives which may not have been at the forefront of your thinking yesterday?

I used to do some work at a factory in Japan way back in the good days when they had lifetime employment. There was one guy there that apparently had really screwed up, and he had a “by the window” job (Japanese term). Literally he would come to work every day and look out the window. “Don’t do that, you might end up ‘by the window’”. “Hiroshi was a rising manager, but now he’s ‘by the window’, the poor bastard”.

Man, do they get discipline or what — shunning is always more effective than yelling and violence. Around here we even have drive-by shunnings, but that is a whole other story.

What’s that? I have to pay taxes on my income and can only offset $3000 of capital losses against it? Guess that’s better than a sharp stick in the eye… or is it?

On the flip side, I lost my job in July, so at least I’ve got that going for me. I’m paying as much for health care as I do for rent every month. I’m pretty sure Satan will be conjuring himself in my living room to personally supervise the next act.

People call me a pessimist and then I tell them I think I’m a realist.

On a lighter note, my daughter was born in Oct 2008.
I was born in Dec 1973.
My father was born July 1929.

I’m pretty sure that makes my family tree at least resemble the Horsemen of the Economic Apocalypse. Dad, of course, was always smarter than me so I’m a little more of a lagging indicator than he was.

If the pile is large enough, writing down the bad debt becomes tantamount to liquidating the company.

There is a trade-off somewhere in there when good management becomes a lot more interested in salvaging the last nuggets of value, retaining value becoming more important than writing down difficult assets. And what better way to motivate the leaders, than tying their compensation to their success in rehabilitating a bad situation?

But the point remains that in America, there is a third option — obtain a bailout and use that to pay bonuses and salaries (at least until the spotlight of publicity becomes more than you can take). Keep going back to the Fed, swapping junk for cash, for as long as you need.

There’s that quaint old “moral hazard” thing. Why should the managers take the hit, when somebody else can take it for them?

Just think how hard you would work if it meant keeping the company alive that was paying your salary.

People haven’t yet figured out that depression-level unemployment means that when your job goes, you won’t necessarily be able to waltz out and get another job, no matter HOW good you are at what you do.

In a way, it’s a lot like this — you’re in a lifeboat with a dozen other people, some of which are manning the oars, and some are bailing water with their hands, as the boat leaks and is taking on water.

Do the people with the greatest ability sit idly by, or do the people with the biggest hands bail the hardest and those with the best biceps man the oars?

If people with ability are not willing to do their part to save the enterprise, they deserve to sink with it.

Instead of believing that those who get paid the big bucks should shoulder most of the risk, we shove the risk down to the bottom layers, with constant reminders that their jobs may be moving to BRIC tomorrow, and reserve the gravy for the most entrenched, secure employees — those at the top.

This is EXACTLY the reason that Americans are sliding lower and lower in the global competitive marketplace.

If a company’s best employees happen to be the best-compensated employees, WHY NOT put them in charge of dealing with the worst problems, the biggest threats to the success of the enterprise?

Instead, we are the Bailout Nation, looking for someone else to clean up the mess we made.