By: Dan Clements February 3, 2009
February 3rd on my radio show ‘BACK TO BASIC’ we swerved into the subject of what brought our economy to the place it is at today. As always some conspiracy theories came to the forefront of the discussion, and after we weeded through them, we got down to what I see as the nuts and bolts of the problem.
Jesus tells us in Mathew 7:12 “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” Do you understand what Jesus is saying here? YOU treat people the way you want to be treated! Wow what a concept! Can this really be applied to Wall Street? Can and should we have free market capitalism with a moral standard? Should free market capitalist use a Christian value system to do business by? I say an emphatic YES!
I will be the first one to defend publicly traded companies against the government setting salary caps, and dictating how and where a company spends its money. On the other hand, I will be the first to criticize a publicly traded company for doing irresponsible things with the share holder’s money. What I see with the CEO’s and executives of a lot of the companies traded on Wall Street is a sense of entitlement that is vastly over rated. What these folks project to the rest of the country is that I deserve all the perks I can get, no matter how much they cost the company.
Ok, I agree that there is not a magic formula to figure out how much a CEO or executive is worth, and they for the most part have a specialized skill set to be able to run or help run a company, however when the salaries and perks run into the multi millions of dollars, you need to step back and ask is this too much? Now we are talking about publicly traded companies that have stock holders that actually own the company. My question is where are the voices of the stock holders when it comes to directing the board of directors? As a share holder, when you receive in the mail a notice of a vote about the stocks you own do you read it and vote, or turn over your vote to a proxy to vote for you? I think the lazy voter syndrome has hit Wall Street at last, and we always get what we vote for.
Now lets talk about Mathew 7:12 and apply it to what is happening on Wall Street. A lot of banks and financial institutes were buying and selling a lot of paper that in the end wasn’t worth the ink and time it took to create it. The question that should have and still needs to be asked is would I want some one to sell me this financial vehicle? Remembering that as a CEO or executive, will this benefit my share holders? As a CEO or executive, am I looking out for the best interest of others or am I chasing after the all mighty dollar at any cost no matter the risk?
As a CEO or executive are my interactions with the political process above board? P J O’Rourke once said “as long as buying and selling is controlled by legislation, the first thing to be bought and sold will be legislators.”
As a politician, do you always govern in the best interest of those who put you in that position? Remember that it is only by the consent of the governed that you are in government in the first place.
As a citizen, do you depend on the government for your daily bread, even though you could supply your own daily bread? Do you realize that by taking from the government, you by proxy are stealing from other productive citizens? I’m not talking about folks who can’t fend for themselves; I’m talking about folks living off the government dole, who could otherwise support themselves, but refuse to do so. (And I’m not talking about government employees; they are a whole other story.) These folks need to ask themselves if they would like someone stealing from them. The answer is most likely they would not like that.
Whether you are a CEO, a politician, or an ordinary citizen, we need to always ask ourselves if what we do in life, or how we treat other, is the way we want others to treat us. Do we live by the golden rule or do we let gold rule us? Think about it!
Dan Clements is a member of the Constitution Party and the host of BACK TO BASIC a Christian/political internet talk show. You can listen to Dan live from 10am-12 noon EST. M-F at www.blogtalkradio.com/dan-clements and www.constitutionalwarrior.com
