Charlie Munger - "Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope."

I read today in this Bloomberg piece that Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's partner (and ultra wealthy fellow) said we should all be thanking God for the bailouts of the Wall Street banksters.

He comes right out and tells us, the little tax-paying people, that plainly we should be footing the bill for bankster malfeasance. He actually said, “There’s danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, ‘My life is a little harder than it used to be,’” and “At a certain place you’ve got to say to the people, ‘Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.’”

This is very interesting to me. We see from the same Bloomberg article:

"Berkshire had advanced 26 percent on the New York Stock Exchange this year as of Sept. 17 and benefited from a recovery in earnings at some of its main bank holdings. It is the largest shareholder of Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest U.S. home lender, with a stake valued at more than $8 billion. Berkshire also owns $5 billion of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. preferred stock. "

This is interesting in that Wells Fargo and Goldman received $35 Billion in combined bailout funds; I guess if I had no principles, or no honesty, I'd be happy with this situation, too. After all, someone just stepped in and made my company a boatload of money by saving the losers on which I was so heavily staked! I guess I'd be trumpeting about the greatness of bailouts, too, if I was set to benefit so handily from them.

But, I can't help but think I'd also be wondering when I threw away my principles and accepted that stealing was just fine. Apparently, the old attempts at hiding the theft are getting tiresome, and I should just 'suck it in and cope' with the blatant admission by old rich men that some of us are more equal than others.

Yuck.