The Bailout: Corporate Welfare

There is less fretting in DC about the dotting of the 'i's' and the crossing of the 't's' of the bailout bill than there is about the immediate political future. By immediate I mean that event in November where we elect a new president.

Republicans and Democrats are at an impasse. On one side they have big business and their armies of lobbyists screaming for financial relief in the form of the cash-out, excuse me, bailout. On the other, in one of the few times that the public actually has a voice that's heard, we have a rising chorus of descent among voters, among Americans in general, to this expenditure. The wrong decision could swing voters whole-heartedly in one direction or another. But which way is the question.

Congress is being inundated with emails from their constituents telling them resounding "No!" to the package. The consequence to not listening to the voters could cost their party the presidential election. If they approve the package, they could well be out of a job along with their candidate. It could well be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back.

A caller to a show last week suggested that with $700bn we could build a brand new banking system. Perhaps we could. What is certain is that the average punter sees this injection of capital exactly for what it is; a massive bailout for the buddies in Wall Street. The same people who complain that Welfare recipients are sucking on the public teat.

These bankers have been caught red-handed in an elaborate Ponzi scam. The public see congress as friends bailing out friends with public cash. And they're not happy. Not happy at all. And congress, with both eyes on the polls are being backed slowly into a unenviable Catch 22. The headlines we read about progress being made are balloons to gauge public reaction. Any why don't we want this? They're spending our funds buying junk that nobody else wants.

The Republicans screwed up by trying to rush through an 'emergency' bill for a disaster that was eight years in the making. This bailout is seen as pushing America into a Socialistic way of doing things. Did they think we wouldn't notice? The 'emergency' card has been played once too often. They've been caught playing loose with public funds.

Make no mistake, so are the Democrats, except that they are trying to sweeten the pill with an additional $300bn in economic stimulus expenditures so that they look like the good guys. Instead of spending $700bn, we're now up to $1 trillion, adding 10% to our national debt in one fell swoop.

This money is being spent to shore up bad decisions, it doesn't create anything; it doesn't save anyone's home from foreclosure, it won't create jobs; it creates nothing. And what happens if it doesn't work?

What difference will there be between the day the money is spend and the following day? None, except that as a nation we will be an additional $1tn in the hole and corporate America will be assured that no matter what happens in this former bastion of capitalism, the new socialist (Communist?) order of fiscal governance will run to bail them out.

It makes you wonder who really won the cold war.