Golden parachutes soil the stars and stripes

The chiefs of failed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are about to walk away with $24 million dollars, folks, and that ain’t right. Back in 1894 Samuel Clemens declared bankruptcy. At 59 years of age he found himself more than $100,000 in debt, a dispiriting state of affairs. In today’s dollar that would amount to around $2 million dollars of debt.



Henry Huddleston Rogers, the No. 2 man at Standard Oil, took an interest in Sam's financial affairs and invited him up to his office. He told him, “Sam, you can afford to be money poor, you cannot afford to be character poor, you must pay back 100 cents on the dollar.”

Well, this was a dismal revelation, as Sam was bound to 50 cents on the dollar by the bankruptcy agreement.

But Henry helped organize a world lecture tour on a steamer, and off they went, Sam, his wife Livy and their middle daughter, Clara.

It took Sam one year to make that raid on an unsuspecting public, and every half-dime he made he sent to Rogers to invest. Subsequently, he wrote a book about that world tour, “Following the Equator,” for which he received a 12.5 percent royalty, along with a $10,000 advance.

“This book is affectionately inscribed to my young friend Harry Rogers, with recognition of what he is, and apprehension of what he may become unless he formed himself a little more closely upon the model of the author.”

In 1898 a cable arrived from Henry: “Sam you are in the black to $15,000, having paid back one hundred cents on the dollar.”

Sam Clemens learned from Henry Rogers that there is no statute of limitations to honor. Honor has no statute of limitations.

“Rogers was the best man I ever knew,” Sam would say. “Were it not for Henry Rogers the only shelter I would have today would be an umbrella, and a borrowed one at that.”

Fast forward to 2008. Fannie Mae Chief Executive Daniel Mudd and Freddie Mac Chief Richard Syron are about to walk away from their failed mortgage giants with combined pay and bonus packages worth about $24 million, bailed out by the taxpayer. This is not free enterprise, this is not capitalism … this is rapacity! But then as George Bernard Shaw liked to remind us, “The government that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul.”

Rogers was no angel himself; some referred to him as “Hell Hound Rogers,” but were Henry Rogers alive today, I suspect he might call Misters Mudd and Syron into his office and have a nice long talk with them. Should Mudd and Syron elect to accept those bogus bonuses it will be a stain on their personal characters, yes, but more importantly, it will be a stain upon the free enterprise system that the United States of America presents as a model to the rest of the world. Stay tuned …

McAvoy Layne is an Incline Village resident who visits area schools as the ghost of Mark Twain.