Some Contracts are More Unbreakable Than Others

Couldn't agree more:

It is fascinating to see how the public narrative in the media has gradually shifted over the past year from Wall Street’s sociopathic practices (which were directly responsible for the creation of the crisis) to the alleged greed of public employee unions and their pension benefits, many of which were the product of agreed wage negotiation packages in which unions were receiving these pension benefits in lieu of increased wage benefits.

During 2008, we were told that the government’s hands were tied and that sanctity of contracts had to be honored. This was when the Federal Reserve authorized 100% payouts to the likes of Goldman Sachs on AIG’s credit default swaps (in effect allowing the Fed to act as an extra budgetary vehicle of the Treasury, which is a violation of the Constitution and shows how patently false the Fed’s claims of independence are). But I don’t seem to recall many Wall Street types going on about the sanctity of contracts when agreements with the UAW were reworked to save GM or now when public employee union pension benefits are under attack. The argument seems to be that the states are suffering from a genuine solvency crisis in which everybody has to make sacrifices, including the “greedy” unions. So why should big financial firms, which would otherwise have been toast but for the munificence of the suffering American taxpayer, be any different?

That's Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and hedge fund manager, posting on Naked capitalism