Bailout Blues

If you're like me, you've been watching this auto industry bailout thing pretty closely. I look at the FEE website every morning. I look at the CATO Institute home page, Investor’s Business Daily and National Review Online. Everybody is saying the same thing. This is a bad idea. The truth is, we really don't need some smart economics folks to tell us this. You and I can smell truth, and this aint it. This is a bad idea, and a bad idea for a lot of reasons. And I don't know about you, but I'm making myself sick thinking about it all the time.

Seriously, have you talked to anybody in the last month that thought this might be a good plan? And, if everyone thinks this is such a bad idea, what are our representatives in Washington doing? At least with the bank bailout, we were giving money in hopes of resuscitation. For the auto industry, we are just trying to keep them comfortable until they die.

Another question ... If so many smart people (not me, the FEE folks!) are so sure that these bailouts are so damaging, then what the smoke is our government doing? Whose idea was it to let attorneys-gone-politician sort out the biggest financial mess of our lifetime. Honestly, and I speak from experience, if attorneys could count, they wouldn't have gone to law school.