Not yet a week after Obama's inaug and the good feelings continue. But not for Jeffrey Scharf who thinks corporate zombies are sucking the life from our financial system.
What's a zombie? Try Bank of America, Citigroup and AIG for starters.
Is Scharf just being a meanie, or is there really something to this. As he puts it, "At the corporate level, the government is shoveling money to stupid instutions as fast as it can. Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG and others lost tens of billions of dollars through foolish lending or improvident acquisitions or both. Instead of letting these companies go bankrupt, the government keeps them alive, in many cases with the same incompetents in charge. Like zombies, these walking dead retain customers who would otherwise go to healthy, better-run competitors. Success is punished, failure rewarded."
Fighting words, until you get to the part where he rips GM and Chrysler. His take is that there would be scant job loss if they disappeared. Scharf feels workers would be picked up by Toyota and Honda - and they'd be needed because there would be increased demand for their higher quality products.
His last paragraph ices the topic: "If personal responsibility means anything, it has to mean that failure is an option. The sooner the zombies are buried, the sooner confidence will return and the rest of us will thrive.
What do you think?
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