Old Hosni is gone. Good riddance! My heart is with the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians who are now celebrating in Tahrir Square.
But wait! We can’t just let this guy skip off with all the billions he’s bilked from Egypt’s coffers from thirty years of shady dealings. I was so happy to see that the Swiss Bank was freezing his assets.
He asserts that he will not leave Egypt. He proclaims that he will die on the soil of his Motherland. Well, then, when his stolen wealth is returned to Egypt’s treasury, a little Old Age Fund should be set up for him. Say, twenty-five thousand dollars annually, plus subsidized housing and access to the local food bank. It’s fair. It’s just. It’s humane for a scoundrel.
And while we’re observing these historic events in Egypt we might take a lesson in justice. We might come to our senses and freeze the assets of Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Vikram Pandit of Citigroup, Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan Chase and John Strumpf of Wells Fargo – for starters. Then we could go after the other major players in orchestrating the financial meltdown – Timothy Gaitner, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, etc.
These guys who waltz away with billions in profits while they create misery and dislocation for many millions of struggling working people are beneath contempt. They should be summoned before a Congressional Committee and told that they can no longer hold positions of responsibility in the US Government or US Corporations. All of their assets should be seized and distributed among the victims of distressed mortgages. They should all be allotted a modest stipend for basic living requirements comparable to that of citizens who subsist at the lowest socio-economic levels. And they all ought to be closely monitored, preferably with an electronic ankle band, to make sure that they do longer engage in theft, fraud, duplicity and violations of the public trust.
This is what we ought to do. But will we? No! We’ll let them sail away with their boat-loads of cash.
It’s hard to fathom. My guess is that we all secretly press this myth close to our breasts, the myth that goes to the very heart of our capitalistic economic system – that if a person has wealth then he/she has earned it and deserves it. We are all simply agog with persons of wealth. It doesn’t matter how they got it. The mere fact that they have it takes our breath away. We seem ready to kneel at the feet and kiss the hands of those who would rob us blind.
Enough! Let us bring these tyrants down!