Begs the big question. In this economic meltdown, are we gonna try to save/preserve what we’ve got - or let it burn down as far as it goes, and start over?



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We decided to not start over when they bailed out the banks...WE are stuck with what we've got...which is corporate welfare...and big money for "big money"...

I agree, and in some respects I think of what's happening now in terms of a forest fire. I've said this before; when you try and "manage" forests so there's never a fire, you get the tangle of undergrowth choking out the healthy plants, you get something that's even more primed for a devastating fire. Permitting the forest fire to burn is actually healthy for the forest in the long run.

But we're not talking trees here, we're talking people and communities. And my biggest fear is this:

We let the auto companies fail, both for valid economic reasons and because - in our inimitable American moralistic fashion - we want to teach all involved a lesson.

But as a result, hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost, and the country does indeed slide into a depression. And what winds up happening is that some of the very people who cried "Let 'em fail!" will lose their jobs. Their communities may be devastated. And they are going to be angry - very angry....

Bailout, at least in terms of the financial industry, is already proving to be the equivalent of a "compassionate family" sitting by the bedside of a dying alcoholic and giving them shots of booze "to ease their suffering".

I had to watch that once as a kid, and it didn't seem to me that it helped anyone. The dying lush took the booze greedily and still died anyway, and everyone still grieved just as much. And a lot of good booze got wasted in the process.

And now, here, we watch on TV every night as the Elephants Guarding The Peanuts innocently explain that they just don't know what happened to the 360 Billion Peanuts they gave the Other Elephants Who Were In Trouble. I mean, The Other Elephants were supposed to lend all the Peanuts to The Squirrels, especially the ones about to lose their nests, but somehow that just didn't happen.

You may just as well hand the shot of booze to the dying alcoholic and say "Here, why don't you give this to a more sober person who isn't dying and could just use a drink pretty badly right now?" Riiiiiiight.

But that's what we're doing here - pouring good booze down a dying alky's gullet, vainly hoping it will somehow revive them.

Everyone, and by "everyone" I mean the people who avoid actual work by either running our system or commenting on it, wants us to believe that there's some actual difference between Wall Street and Washington, wherein the loosing of Billions of Dollars into Paulson's greasy hands will somehow translate into "responsible transference and oversight" of that huge pile of cash into the hands of his friends and colleagues. And we just sit here and watch it happen.

When the occasional responsible legislator or honest pundit squawks an angry question about just where the hell all the money went, Paulson dives out of his Elephant suit and calmly replies "Sirs, I am NOT an alcoholic, see, I don't go to meetings".

And then we're quickly whisked off to see Afghanistan or Iraq or Sudan or, worse, Wall Street, and reminded that we MUST DO SOMETHING NOW OR PEOPLE WILL SUFFER. Never mind that people are suffering, all over the place, just keep it in your head that we absolutely MUST empty the Treasury immediately or it could get MUCH WORSE.

And what they aren't telling us is that, to their thinking, the very worst possible is a large group of Fat Cats losing the spoils they stole from us and, even worse, losing the system by which they expected to continue their despoiling until Kingdom Come.

And this is what we're agreeing on trying to fix by throwing money at it.

Forget the Elephant In The Room for a moment. Look at all the Peanuts he's been eating while we weren't noticing him.

Letting it burn may will hurt, alot, but on the other side of the fire we have a reality to base our rebuilding on. Keep trimming the forest and all we will get is the galaxy's largest topiary, growing in a big pile of $chit.

GM has a lot of nerve to ask for a bailout. They've been closing plants yet maintaining CEO bonuses, and they've been out-sourcing jobs for what, the last 10 years? And still are. So, they sell the taxpayers' jobs for years and years, giving that money to China, India, Russia... and now they turn to those very same taxpayers to ask for money?

It's infuriating.


How about giving that money to those that will get laid off? How about giving them all a new car? That will get rid of the inventory. But for pete's sake don't give to rich cats who have done nothing but screw the American worker and have shown their true metal (all out for themselves) for YEARS.

GM has a lot of nerve to ask for a bailout. They've been closing plants yet maintaining CEO bonuses, and they've been out-sourcing jobs for what, the last 10 years? And still are. So, they sell the taxpayers' jobs for years and years, giving that money to China, India, Russia... and now they turn to those very same taxpayers to ask for money?

It's infuriating.


How about giving that money to those that will get laid off? How about giving them all a new car? That will get rid of the inventory. But for pete's sake don't give to rich cats who have done nothing but screw the American worker and have shown their true metal (all out for themselves) for YEARS.