— Pinko liberal commie Marxist Michael Kinsley isn’t fooled by the Washington circus around stock options:
In short the abuses these reforms address, if anything, drove stock prices up, but what really bothers people is that they came back down again. Politicians promising to solve that problem are making the same mistake they purport to correct: grabbing a short-term advantage that will cost them dearly in the longer run.
So why is Kinsley so clear when Great Authorities Greenspan and Buffett (Warren, not Jimmy) are so confused? Kaus has one answer, and I have another: Greenspan is a political animal, who knows which way the wind is blowing, and Buffett has similar predilections for different reasons: he has to explain why Berkshire Hathaway, his pricey holding company, bit the big one throughout the Tech Bubble. He was robbed by cheating CEOs, of course.
Give me a break: even the most ardent proponents of draconian accounting for stock options don’t really believe this issue has squat to do with restoring investor faith in the market.
Let’s make it illegal to ever lose money in the stock market again. And while we’re at it, let’s ban stock ownership of any kind for anyone who works for a public company. That’ll fix all the problems. Only rich guys who don’t have to work for anyone can own stock.