Have we already lost the war of hearts and minds?

In my nine month "all expenses paid excursion" to Iraq, the mantra was "winning hearts and minds"....getting the people of Iraq to believe in democracy, freedom and open markets. I am concerned that thanks to the current spread of socialism in our own country, we may have already lost that battle.... It didn't matter how many times the democrats repeated the chant during the election about "corporate greed and excess"....greed didn't cause this crisis. Wall street didn't decide to destroy itself in an orgy of "greedy trading". Mortgage traders and bank executives didn't set out to kill their very lifeblood of credit by preying upon the "little man".

Plain and simple, government pressure and democratic congressmen lobbied for and got authorization for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to issue high risk loans to people that could not pay them back. They then participated in a bundling of these risky mortgages together for sale on the credit market. It would be no different than a hacker selling copies of "halo 3" for PC that contained a virus....customers buy the game, the virus spreads and suddenly we wake up and half of our computer infrastructure is gutted....

What we hear though, is "Corporate Greed"..."Shame on you CEO's - we will mandate that you don't earn over $300K a year"....People assume that CEO's spring from the womb in Armani suits and silver spoons. Keep in mind, Jeff Bezos (granted the fact that he is a FLAMING liberal) started Amazon.com from his garage. He "earns" $81K per year, but has benefits of $1.1M (according to wikipedia).....he only has about $8 Billion in net worth.... But he didn't just stumble over Amazon - he worked his liberal butt off to make it what it is today...he earned every penny of his net worth....so why do we gnash our teeth when all us "common folk" who weren't smart enough, determined enough, or hard working enough to build a company like that see their houses, boats, and cars?

http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-stimulus-saves-microsoft-billionaire-hundreds-of-millions-phew-2009-2

Check out "someguy's" comments and the subsequent backlash....

Thanks to the Dems and the media, we have repeated the chant "corporate greed" so many times that perception becomes reality. It is assumed that if a CEO has a salary of $10M a year and a pre-arranged termination fee of many Millions, that they didn't "need" the money and therefore were greedy. Let me ask you a question - why is it that on Valentine's day it is soooo much more beneficial to the males of our species if they plan ahead and get reservations at an expensive restaurant instead of going through the Mickey Dee's drive through? I mean come on - the difference between Value Meal #1 and a steak at Ruth's Chris is about three times the beef (maybe $10 a pound for high grade), a scoop or two of cooked veggies (an extra $1.75?) some mashed potatoes (same as the fries, just cooked differently) and throw in an extra $20 for the "share" of extra salaries, rent, ambience, etc. BUT, even getting a "cheap" bottle of wine and the meal at Ruth's Chris runs in the low $100's for two, up to $250 if there are appetizers, extra drinks and a good tip.....They didn't "need" that extra money, right? Aren't they just being "greedy"???

The short answer of course is no. The "long" explanation of this is best given by Ayn Rand in the "money speech" by Francisco D'Anconia in "Atlas Shrugged" - http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1826. Far and away the best treatise on the events we are facing today. The "medium" answer that your spouse or significant other inherently understands in the paradigm of valentine's is that the free and open market has put a value on effort. They are impressed with the extra effort (over the drive thru) that you would go to in cleaning yourself up, putting on a suit, making reservations, saving your sheckles and taking them to a nice restaurant. The "greedy" restaurant exists because of enough of society values high quality food and "ambience" over the golden arches that they have been allowed to raise their prices high enough to put a true value on their services. Too high, and not enough people would show to make a profit. Lower the price too much and not only could they not feed everyone that shows up (maximum throughput, not to mention no reservations available) but the quality would drop because they wouldn't have enough money after paying employees, suppliers, landlords, etc to buy higher quality supplies.....the free and fair market has placed a value commensurate with their skill and effort at serving food. Concurrently that same market has dictated the acceptable price of a Big Mac.....the difference between those two prices is the "effort and value" theoretically you place on your sweetie.....

So why when it is so easy to understand the folly of taking your wife to McDonald's on Valentine's Day, is it so difficult for the general populace to understand the fact that some companies place an appropriate value on the enormous risk and personal effort that these multinational corporate CEO's must take upon themselves to improve shareholder value????