I practiced law for over a dozen years and negotiated lots of contracts. And, unlike the Bush administration, I always kept my poker face. Why? Because if you want the best possible deal, you must make the other party think that he needs you more than you need him.<\/p>\n
So, for example, when you tell banks that they’re too big to fail, you disincentivize them from cooperating, or even telling you the truth. That’s why I’m not surprised that 13 of the “top 23 private recipients of taxpayer-funded bailouts under the $700 billion program” enacted by the Bush administration “owed more than $220 million in unpaid federal taxes”<\/a> and that they lied about it on their TARP contracts. <\/p>\n Why bother being honest? After all, it’s not as if Bush’s Treasury Department made them back up their statements with actual tax records. Of course not — they were too big to fail.<\/p>\n This brings me to my latest limerick:<\/p>\n Tough Negotiators, Those Bushies! Dear bank, we can not let you fail. I practiced law for over a dozen years and negotiated lots of contracts. And, unlike the Bush administration, I always kept my poker face. Why? Because if you want the best possible deal, you must make the other party think that he needs you more than you need him. So, for example, when you tell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[414,179,31,50,466,44,114,8,180,2,178,154,6,7,3,419,45,459],"tags":[565,216,206,563,2748,373,547,562,564,267,376,421,417],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":806,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBy Madeleine Begun Kane<\/p>\n
\nYou’re too big. Pay no mind if we wail
\nThat you owe us back tax.
\nDo not worry. Relax!
\nCuz that huge bailout check’s in the mail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"