This Is Your Government On Drugs
We're like the sap who gives a junkie money to buy another bag -- which likely means we'll soon be paying big for his emergency room care when he gets hit by a truck while wandering around in a heroin stupor.
Bailout junkie GM's got its hand out -- again -- and cash crackwhore AIG is again back for more. A WSJ story has us taxpayers extending their welfare payment another $30 billion.
The Fed and Treasury said ... that the cost of not helping the company was judged to be too high."Given the systemic risk AIG continues to pose and the fragility of markets today, the potential cost to the economy and the taxpayer of government inaction would be extremely high," the joint statement said.
Here's how nuts the GM request is, from a Time magazine piece by Douglas A. McIntyre about how we may have to keep the big loser on life support indefinitely:
The part of the GM request for money that is very clear is that, in exchange for $16.6 billion, the company will fire 47,000 people. It may be the only example in U.S. history where the government will pay to put tens of thousands of its own citizens out on the street. Most of these people have probably been paying taxes to the IRS for years.The perversion of the government stepping in to run an industry to save the broader economy is that it must live with the consequences of its own actions, which in this case involves investing capital into a restructuring that increases the burden on social services, causes great suffering, and is a lesson to private enterprise that failure can, in some cases, be rewarded.
Great message: Make cars nobody wants to buy, and the U.S. taxpayer will pay you billions! Forcibly, that is.
Come on...bankruptcy is for the little guy -- all of us small-time, taxpaying, work-a-day schmos, that is, who are bailing out the big business failures.
Comments
Very quiet in her today.
Are people studying for finals?
Weeping silently over news reports?
Adjusting suicide machines?
Anyway, I've completely lost faith in Barack Obama (not that I ever had much, or I'd have voted for him in November, and not just to block Hillary in May.) But it's obvious he has neither the intellectual not the ideological tools to deal with this crisis. As even my freaky-leftazoid mother was saying on the phone this morning: Roosevelt never even *considered* bailouts (or spending bills) like this. When banks needed to fail, he let them fail, and their assets were re-priced. (This woman was born into the worst of the Great Depression. Her life has powerful symetry.)
These aren't bailouts. They're reckless adoptions. AIG is a financial Octomom.
Posted by: Crid [cridcridatgmail] at March 2, 2009 10:11 AM
In HERE today, not in her. Nobody's talking abotu sex at all...
Posted by: Crid [cridcridatgmail] at March 2, 2009 10:12 AM
I would say libertarianism is dead, dead, deader than a mussel's sex life.
We should nationalize banks. Of course.
Or we could live like pygmies in a cold climate, which will not be fun at all.
Yes, unregulated or poorly regulated free financial markets lead to collapse. How many times have we seen it?
Bring on socialism. I want it. I want universal health care, I want banks that do not collapse, I am sick and tired of being told that rich people need their second, third- and fourth-homes and $22 million annual salaries or they will stop working or investing.
Libertarianism is a pipe dream. Financial free markets self destruct. We did not regulate after Long Term Capital Management (1998), and guess what? Now, we have LTCMx1000.
This will get uglier for years.
Posted by: i-hole at March 2, 2009 10:39 AM
Yeah great idea I-hole. The government is so great at what it does run, why not let it have everything?
No company should have been bailed out. They would have gone under, people would have lost money, and been out jobs. Other solvent companies providing the same service would have bought up the assets and hired workers, to take up the slack in the market. It would have worked fine, except for UAW workers, who would have had to downgrade their lifestyle to match their skills.
WHy aren't we hearing from all the people who went broke with Enron? Shouldn't the government be saving them too?
There is no government guarantee and should be no guarantee that you aren't going to lose your job or your investments. Life has risk. Deal with it.
Posted by: momof3 at March 2, 2009 10:48 AM
In HERE today, not in her. Nobody's talking abotu sex at all...
Unfortunately, we're just getting fucked, and not in the good way.
Posted by: Amy Alkon 
at March 2, 2009 10:49 AM
Where has socialism succeeded? When has it ever paid its own bills?
Nowhere. Never.
Posted by: Crid [cridcridatgmail] at March 2, 2009 10:50 AM
I-hole is sincere. He's announcing: I'm completely incompetent at adding value to the lives of others, and thus incapable of taking care of myself. Therefore, I'll simply squat where I stand, like a petulent child on a shopping trip with Mom, and insist that others care for me.
Anyone suppose that will work out for him? Does anyone think the rest of society, which certainly has it's own problems, will see any reason to reward this behavior from what we assume is a grown human being? Is that how human nature works?
I'm a lifelong Democrat. But I'm ashamed of Waxman, and ashamed of Barney Frank, and ashamed of Pelosi. Misjudging human character so badly is a sin, no matter how often they tell us the intentions are good. It's cowardly and shameful.
Posted by: Crid [cridcridatgmail] at March 2, 2009 10:59 AM
(And, as noted earlier, ashamed of Obama as well.)
Posted by: Crid [cridcridatgmail] at March 2, 2009 11:00 AM
"Bring on socialism. I want it."
Well you must be pretty happy about current events then, because socialism is what you are getting. I'm sure it's going to work out just great.
Posted by: Pirate Jo at March 2, 2009 11:18 AM
Stop this planet, I need to get off! o.O
Posted by: Flynne at March 2, 2009 11:27 AM
I would say libertarianism is dead, dead, deader than a mussel's sex life.
BS. 6 months ago most Americans thought libertarianism was a liver disease.
Mark my words: the coming economic collapse is going to be the biggest 'shot-in-the-arm' libertarianism has ever hoped for. When people start to really feel the pain caused by our government, they're going to receive a long over due education in economics.
Posted by: Snoop-Diggity-DANG-Dawg at March 2, 2009 11:43 AM
I agree with Snoop: Conservative/libertarian thinking is the only thing that works. People got nowhere else to go.
Posted by: Crid [cridcridatgmail] at March 2, 2009 12:26 PM
According to wikipedia, $30,000,000,000 + $16,600,000,000 is more than the budgets for NASA, DoD space activities and the National Science foundation, combined.
Posted by: Pseudonym at March 2, 2009 1:17 PM
I-hole, how about this? You want socialism? Come live in Quebec. Here you'll get to pay high taxes coupled with crappy job opportunities. But hey, we're doing great ... just don't mention that without provincial welfare we'd be bankrupt.
And please tell me, what has been deregulated in the US? As far as I can tell, the biggest piece of deregulation has allowed interstate branch banking. Funny, banks just to the north of you have had interprovincial branch banking forever and they are in very good (relatively speaking) shape.
Posted by: Charles at March 2, 2009 2:13 PM
Actually, Bankruptcy is NOT for the little guys, since the Bankruptcy Bill a few years ago, paid for and lobbied for by the assholes we're bailout out today, pretty much did away with bankruptcy for the little guy.
Posted by: jerry at March 2, 2009 6:40 PM
Jerry, is this the thing where the credit card companies tightened the screws? There was talk about it years ago but the details are forgotten.
(By the way, and I don't suspect this irony will bring you comfort in any way: The bailouts won't work. Not for them, and not for us. But it's a start....)
Posted by: Crid [cridcridatgmail] at March 2, 2009 10:04 PM
Unfortunately, the bailouts will continue for the next two years, and likely four years. No one likes to admit that they made a mistake; policitians are completely incapable of it.
Since they can't admit that the first round of bailouts was a lousy idea, they will keep throwing good money after bad. Only rampant public disgust can lead to a change at the next round ofelections.
The big question is: does the great mass of voters actually realize how screwed this whole picture is?
Posted by: bradley13 at March 2, 2009 11:42 PM
> No one likes to admit that they
> made a mistake; policitians are
> completely incapable
Posted by: Crid [cridcridatgmail] at March 3, 2009 12:16 AM
So, all you people who voted for Obama because you couldn't stomach the idea of McCain - how you like me now?
I (and others like me) told you that Obama was a socialist. You told us we were nut-bags.
Kathleen Parker - I'm looking at you.
Those among the libertarian set who couldn't vote for McCain because he wasn't pure enough are to blame for the shit we're about to get.
Elections have consequences. This one cost you everything you have.
Posted by: brian at March 3, 2009 6:33 AM
It was painfully obvious during the campaign that McCain & Palin didn't have the slightest clue what to do about the financial crisis.
It's now equally obvious that Obama & company know exactly what they're doing. In the words of his Chief of Staff: "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."
"Where has socialism succeeded?" I can tell you from experience behind the Iron Curtain that it succeeds brilliantly at giving politicians limitless power over people's lives & wallets, and that's the whole point. Americans have put into office a government that actually has an incentive to deliberately worsen the economy in order to further their agenda to nationalize banking, health care, & everything else. Why should the Obamunist be upset over what's happened to the Dow since he took office? He's delighted! The worse the economy gets, the more America will need his brand of Big Government to come to the rescue.
Posted by: Martin at March 3, 2009 9:40 AM
At least McCain KNEW he didn't have a clue, and was keen to leave well enough alone.
He also knows that you cannot spend your way to prosperity.
Obama knows nothing. He's no smarter than Reid or Pelosi. If brains was dynamite, the entire Democratic power structure in Washington wouldn't have enough to blow the snot out of one nostril.
Posted by: brian at March 3, 2009 10:05 AM
McCain supported the bailouts, too.
Posted by: Pirate Jo at March 3, 2009 2:19 PM
McCain supported the bailouts, too
The Republicans are, for the most part, the Democrats, with the pretense of being for small government.
Posted by: Amy Alkon
at March 3, 2009 2:33 PM
I think you'll find that McCain was for TARP until it was revealed that Paulson lied about the entire setup.
He, like all Republicans except Specter, Snowe, and Collins, voted against the porkulus.
Posted by: brian at March 3, 2009 3:26 PM
