So CITI was ready to pick up a very expensive $50 Million private jet they ordered back in 2005. The luxury Dassault Falcon 7X, one of only nine in the United States, can seat up to 12 and sports a high quality entertainment system and luxurious digs. The problem? Barack Obama didn’t want them to collect on their order. You see CITI accepted money as part of the government’s massive Wall Street bailout and the new President, with the recent memory of auto executives showing up to Congressional hearings for their own bailout on private jets, was no doubt fresh in his mind.
Obama decided it was his place to step in and let the private institution know he did not think accepting the plane was a good idea. Michigan Democrat Senator Levin even wanted to go so far as using the Treasury to block the sale of the French made plane; Obama’s icy reaction seemed to be enough and so the strong arm of the government wasn’t needed, CITI caved and said it wouldn’t accept the toy. There is a valuable lesson here that has nothing to do with corporate extravagance but much to do about the nationalizing of private institutions and our slow descent toward socialism. The lesson? When the government owns business, the government gets what it wants.
Normally it would have been a corporate board or the shareholders themselves rising up when the corporation was heading in the wrong direction. Now it’s the long arm of the federal government, three branches of holier-than-though, approval rating obsessed, media whores who will take any chance they get to meddle in the business of others if it means they can up their own public profile or impress a bevy of hangers-on. Unlike Bank of America and potentially a soon to be onslaught of other financials, the taxpayers are still not the majority shareholders of CITI; that face doesn’t matter to Congresspeople or President’s who are feeling the high that only comes with unchecked power. This won’t be the first or the last time Obama, the Democratic Congress or even many RINO’s pick up a phone or take a ride to the headquarters of a corporation and start dictating their terms.
The question isn’t whether CITI should take ownership of the jet. I think most level headed people can agree the architects of that institution’s disaster should not be looting their companies money for such trivial expenses. What is important is to ask, iff a purchase is within the limits of the law and the authority given to a CEO or a board by its shareholders, is it the job of an American president to tell CITI or any other company how to spend its money? Not in a capitalist society, but unfortunately that is no longer the economic system in which we live.
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