Rule of law failing in the USSA

Is the rule of law regarding contracts failing in the US?

I was listening to an interview this morning with the President of Russia. He was talking about the need for global investors to invest in Russia. Global investment in Russia has fallen tremendously. He acted like global investors are really missing a good opportunity. Right! The reason global investors abandoned Russia because the rule of law failed. Suddenly taxes that no one had ever heard of were applied to the Yukos oil company which was sited and penalized for years of not paying these unknown taxes until the company was bankrupt and sold off to one of Russia's government run oil companies. Other unknown environmental laws suddenly appeared forcing non Russia companies to give up their stakes in Russian oil fields. The rule of law meant nothing. The laws suddenly changed to suit whatever Putin's government wanted to do. The current President denies that this was this case and says they have improved the rule of law. Of course, no one seems to believe him.

Now are we starting to see the failure of rule of law in the US under President Obama. Many ordinary people who invested their retirement savings in GM bonds suddenly discover that President Obama's auto task force worked out a "deal" that eliminates 90% of their investment in order to help the company and the union survive. These retirees had understood that their investments would be safe because the rule of law for bankruptcy said they would have first priority in a bankruptcy. Instead President Obama's task force hands over any money to the union who would not have come first if the rule of law had been followed. If people can't rely on the existing laws how can they feel good about investing in America. This is not a good precedent.

Now this morning the Citigroup Bank under US government control has said that they are not going to pay the rest of millions in severance to departed executives per the "contracts" with the executives. The bank didn't want to draw more attention to the big payments to executives and they're counting on that the executives will not sue to avoid drawing the public's anger. The payments are quite large. The contracts also stated that the departing executives would not work for a competitor and would not recruit employees from Citigroup. The failure to pay is a breach of contract. While Citigroup may be morally right in not continuing to "reward" the executives in power when Citigroup nearly failed, it is legally wrong to violate a contract.. If Citigroup will violate a contract to an employee, who is to say they won't violate a contract to a customer. Of course if Citigroup has breached the contract, I would say these executives can now work for Citigroup's competitors and can recruit employees from Citigroup. Then where will that leave this US government run bank that needs to pay the taxpayers back.

With the Chrysler and GM "bankruptcy deals" and the US government influence over the banks, I'm afraid we are starting to see the failure of the rule of law in this country. The rule of law made the US a great place to invest. Now investing in the US is becoming more of gamble. You can't depend on the existing laws. The government thinks the ends justifies the means. There are going to be economic consequences if the government persists in twisting the law. It does not bode well for the future.