Bailouts are the Ultimate Corruption

As we had suggested earlier in the month, a token bailout has been given to General Motors and Chrysler. $17.4 bullion may seem like a ton 'o cash, but its chump change for these sieve-like companies. The Big Three have hit the proverbial iceberg; it's only a matter of time until they go propellers-up. Unsurprisingly, six in ten Americans would prefer to see those propellers than have their tax-dollars go towards making more gas-sucking, barely-functional fashion excessories. And who could blame such sentiment?

Even more odious, in our opinion, is the use of TARP (i.e. taxpayer) money to fund bonuses on Wall Street. The complete hypocrisy of, say, AIG's Jay Wintrob getting $3 million in 'retention awards' is mind-numbing. We personally feel so disgusted that we look for the lynch mobs forming, hunting down Wall Street's finest and stringing them up in Central Park... but we instead see complacence. The American public seems content to whine vaguely about things, but do nothing to stop out-of-control lemon socialism.

These bailouts, besides unwise and reckless, are the signs of corruption so deep and pervasive it makes our head spin. For example, Mr. Henry Paulson, Jr. is a former Goldman Sachs CEO. As Secretary of Treasury and manager of TARP, Mr. Paulson has given his former employer $10 billion of unregulated cash. If this isn't a conflict of interest, we don't know what is. Mr. Paulson also helped remove Goldman Sachs from the old net-capital rule; last we checked, before its recent, cynical move to become a bank, this allowed Goldman to leverage their assets-to-capital to around 30:1 - a speculative foray which taxpayers are now expected to clean up the mess from.

Therein is the rotten core of the affair: public money has been usurped. Money which could have gone towards any number of productive things -- which would have given real, measurable benefits -- instead are going towards rewarding those who created the mess in the first place.

These people -- the bankers, the auto CEOs, Mr. Paulson, et al. -- are so obscenely greedy we feel ill sharing the same nationality. Even though the entire world is in the 2007 Depression, they will still try to milk the system for every last dollar they can get. The callous disregard for the misery and suffering they are helping to create is staggering, but yet it is apparently greeted with cheers and accolades.