Word of the day... Bailout.

My own broke-back perspective on corporate welfare.

 

The word of the day: Bailout. 

What does it mean and who is it good for? 

The answer: Millionaires and the Chinese!

In today’s market place it appears that all one needs to do to become tremendously successful is to run one’s business into the ground and then run crying up to the fool on the hill to ask for a nice chunk of corporate welfare. Ask and ye shall receive. With $700 billion going to Wall Street and a proposed $15 billion going to the auto industry, what’s next?

 Maybe McDonald’s could use some extra pocket change so they can finally afford some of the items off of their own dollar menu. How many $1 cheeseburgers can a couple of billion buy anyway? After a certain price can you get a bulk rate? Oh, here’s a great idea! Let’s give McDonalds the however many billions we feel like dishing out that day so they can buy their burgers and sell them back to us with the same mark up they used to sell their burgers in the first place. Let’s see, it costs McDonalds say, $.25 cents to make a hamburger, so at a dollar, that’s a 400% markup. Not too shabby! Now, they buy their own $1 burgers and mark them up the same amount at a different location, under and different name and that banks $4 per burger. Cha-ching! It’s incredible, and the consumer will be none the wiser; I mean, why should they care now that gas is falling at an incredible rate!

Wait a minute!  

Isn’t that supposed to make things cheaper? 

Now, I understand this little diatribe seems a little strange, but really, it makes as much sense as everything else that is going on. I’ve never seen so much smoke in the mirrors. Not more than a few days ago, the CEO for Merrill Lynch (one of the major Wall Street failures) has the gall to ask his board of directors for a $10 million dollar bonus. He clearly earned it. He was one of the front runners in destroying his own company that initially started the first of the bailouts; and then he sold his company to another brokerage firm. I’d say that merits a $10 million dollar bonus, don’t you? To be fair, he did eventually retract his request, but that just goes to show you what people are trying to get away with. The good ol’ boys down at AIG showed us the same thing. Let’s plead for welfare and then go on lavish, multi-million dollar excursions. Brilliant! I’m pretty sure if a single, unemployed, mother of sixteen did that, she’d probably see some prison time for welfare fraud.

So what are the auto makers going to do with their money? 

ROADTRIP!!! 

It’s about time they got out and explored the country they are working so hard to destroy. I’d suggest that at some point in your trip you swing through the state of Michigan. I just know you’ll love it. It’s the perfect climate for building your cars. Maybe you can build up some factories there. Detroit is good. Flint would be even better! Oh, what’s that you say? You tried that already? Sorry, I’m confused.   Why would it not work out? Oh, I see, you found cheaper labor elsewhere. Well that makes sense I guess. 

I wonder if anyone has explained the folly in their method of reasoning… 

You continue to send our jobs overseas for cheaper labor all while forgetting that if we don’t have jobs, we can’t buy your cars; but hey, the Chinese will be able to… soon anyway. And now that you’ve bankrupted several major cities, you’re going to ask the very people you ruined to loan you some dough so that you don’t ruin any more major cities. I wonder if the Chinese would be so forgiving under these circumstances. Something tells me executions could be involved.

I realize that maybe I’m being a little harsh on the auto industry. I mean, they have been offering us luxury gas guzzlers at alarmingly high rates for the past 10+ years. They didn’t leave us empty handed. Clearly we wanted these kings of consumption. That’s why they’ve been flying off the dealers lots and filling their pockets full of money.

WAIT A MINUTE! (Again)

That’s the problem isn’t it? The fact that they don’t have any money? So, these cars that we were begging for weren’t selling, yet you kept building them anyway? Oh, they were selling, but gas prices have recently halted consumer purchasing which has brought you to the verge of bankruptcy. Well, gas didn’t spiral out of control until just a few years ago. So, what you’re saying then is is that in a two year time span, you’ve managed to spend the entirety of the LOADS of money that you made off of your titans of fuel? What exactly did you spend it on?

Solving our energy crisis?

No.

Charitable ventures?

No.

Hookers and blow?

… No.

Then what could you have possible spent your money on!

                The answer is, is that they don’t have a viable answer. They’ve all received insane bonuses. They all have corporate jet’s (oh wait, congress just made them sell those). I’m sure they have fancy suits and the whole nine yards, yet they can’t tell you were the money went. 

Incredible!

 I wonder if they invested it on Wall Street.   That could possibly explain it in a logical manor. Big businesses invest in other big businesses. So, when Wall Street went under, the auto makers lost all their money too. So what’s the solution then? I think that brings about full circle to our word of the day. 

Bailout.

We give Wall Street $700 billion and that solves the problem right?

No?

 Ok, well then after we bailout Wall Street, let’s bailout the auto industry. Problem solved. Oh, no you say? The credit card industry has also gone bust? Bailout. Because the credit industry has failed the retailer industry has also come crashing down. Bailout. Because no one goes to malls to buy things anymore the frozen yogurt industry has also come tumbling down. Bailout.

                So what happens when all the money that we used to spend on all these products these businesses offered is all spent in a massive effort to bail them out?

… The businesses complete their move to China and we all revert back to our hunter gatherer stages.

So let’s not forget the word of the day today kids…

BAILOUT!

Author's Note

Comments encouraged.

Reviews

[gravitylava]

You definitely express your opinions in this piece. I like the way you break things down and put them out there. It really helped me, as a teenager, understand the situation that we are in right now. Thanks =D.
-michelle