Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Monday, January 25, 2010

Double Standards

We are pointing out the obvious, but it's pretty funny to see Megan McArdle report on the Stuyvesant Town's default without mentioning its owners' moral duty to keep making their payments. McArdle's example for her moral lecture was a woman with a comparatively high income who could not afford to keep all her property, so she walked away from her residence, just like the Tishman Partnership walked away from Stuyvesant Town. Tishman Speyer has property all over the US and the world. In fact, they have multiple properties in DC. Should they be allowed to keep all those properties or sell them to afford payments on Stuyvesant Town? The answer is simple. Corporations do not have to honor contracts. Individuals do.

8 comments:

bulbul said...

"The JV is out of money."

I...
Um...
Wow.

Susan of Texas said...

Heh!

CMike said...

Well done! But rats, I was going to make the same point elsewhere and now I'll have to credit you.

CMike said...

I think it should be:

Corporations do not have to honor the spirit of the contracts they enter into. Individuals do.

bulbul said...

I love that distinction that the acolytes of Our Lady of Unflinching Morals suddenly came up with: "can't" vs. "don't feel like." a) the potential applications are endless, b) come to think of it, that distinction crops up all over right-wing ideology.

mushr00m said...

Isn't the whole point of incorporating to evade responsibility?

Fleas correct the era said...

"Isn't the whole point of incorporating to evade responsibility?"

So 2009. That was then.

Now it's to evade responsibility and buy hot new discount-priced Senators.

Anonymous said...

One don't panic.

Two incorporate at least 7 corporations for receiving or paying any money. Get a letter from a lawyer, throw it in the garbage with
with the other trash and incorporate another corporation. Transfer title to your home to a corporation, car title too, assign the car as your personal vehicle by the owning corporation and cancel any insurance.

At one time I went black (during the Reagan administration which between a combination of federal penalty taxes for not being single, being self empoyeed so I paid all of the social security, living in a reasonable state with 11.8 per cent marginal tax rate, I reached 62 per cent in taxes in one year. This is while the thieves were rebuilding those trash battleships for billions.) Everything went corporate and doing business as. The next year, I doubled my income and only paid FICA and Medicare.

Incorporate. Most states in the 80s, it was only $15.

Owe money, sell the debt to another corporation, they chase that, hell, another corporation and transfer.

Tax the hell out of the lawyers, they all steal escrow money.