Portfolio of Dogs
“I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”
–Woody Allen
That’s how I feel about the U.S. government buying, ostensibly on my behalf, an equity slice (or several) in household names like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citigroup, and countless others.
Just me talking out loud, but if my tax dollars now give me a .0000000000000000001% stake in a portfolio of American corporations, why do they all have to be dogs? Why can’t they be profit-gushers like ExxonMobil or Chevron Texaco? Or at least Wal-Mart, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft or any of dozens of other venerable companies that are still making a profit and have positive net worth?
When it comes to the first group of companies, U.S. taxpayers would appear to be not so much “stakeholders” as “bag-holders” (as in, “left, holding”).
