Ezra Klein, in today's Washington Post:
Contracts are sacred only when rich people are getting paid
Shahien Nasiripour reports that J.P. Morgan plans to go hard against policies to modify underwater mortgages because contracts are sacred documents premised on the borrowers' "promise to repay."
This struck one union employee as a bit odd: After all, the business community is constantly demanding that autoworkers and steelworkers and other well-compensated laborers change their contracts to remain more in sync with the times. In those cases, contracts don't appear to be all that sacred, and employers' aren't seen as having some cosmic "promise to repay."
"Next time big business or Republican Governors or Mayors are talking about how working families need to 'sacrifice' or 'give back' for the good of the community by altering their contracts," e-mailed the AFL-CIO's Eddie Vale, "let's remember what happens when the shoe is on the other foot."
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Not to mention how corporations, even those who borrowed TARP money, don't have to pay the taxes on their subsequent earnings (the $38 billion tax blow-off the Obama administration handed those who borrowed OUR money to pay themselves back and reward themselves with bonuses for going bankrupt).
Like my daddy used to say: "It's a good country, America."
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