The line is beginning to form for those taxpayer bailout dollars. You mean you haven't heard? Say your business or industry isn't going very well. You're on the verge of losing everything if you don't do something drastic. What do you do? Let things go south and head to the government for a bailout.
It worked swimmingly for the banking and investment industries. They were on their way down the tubes. They weren't running out of money, mind you. They had plenty of cash, but we had a crisis looming they told us. Our homes were losing value, said the banks who helped determine the value most of them. Our stocks were going south, said the investment community who administered them. We don't have the confidence to loan to each other, said the banks who controlled loaning decisions.
What we need is cash, they gravely intoned. Lot's of it. Your cash. We won't lend you money, but we want you to lend us some. What a great idea! And so Congress, who funds their campaigns with donations from rich people like bankers and stock brokers went along. Things must be fixed. A crisis like this deserves all our attention, they cried in unison. More rapid than eagles, the statements they came. They forecast the doom and decried the shame.
The masses panicked on cue. Yes, give them our money, so they might loan it back to us. Write them a check with no collateral after they squandered theirs in a dramatic display of fiscal irresponsibility. Yeah. Let's give them $750 billion. Wait, they need $250 billion more. They couldn't have really asked for a trillion, could they? That would choke even the most concerned observers. How about we get that trillion it in two easy payments?
Whoa! The auto industry said. You mean you can run your industry into the ground and get some bailout cash? We want some of that action. Quick, let's don our long faces and swoop into Washington. How brilliant of us. Sure congress will initially castigate us and our management ability, but how bad can we be if we can score some of this cash. We'll then collude with the banks to charge high interest rates, and we can both make back this money and then some. Sweet.
But the knucklehead auto industry execs couldn't even get the begging right. We all had a good laugh that they flew into town on corporate jets whisking congressional testimony that told us how the bankrupt and begging companies had been so well managed. They make great cars. They have savvy managers. They employ efficient workers. It wasn't anybody's fault. Nobody in Detroit, anyhow.
Then they slipped congress the ransom note. Give us the money or the Detroit workers get it. Congress considered the demand but quickly realized they should feign some level of outrage and concern. Lawmakers sent the execs back to Michigan with some homework. Come back in December and bring us some political cover for goodness sakes. Do we really need to explain that to you?
The airline and travel industries looked on, green with envy. Our industries are going broke, too. We employ lots of Americans, too. Let's see what happens with the Detroit brethren. In the mean time, somebody write a ransom note.
