Bailouts, Stimulus, and Survival

The news this morning is again grim.  The Seattle Times after borrowing extensively against real estate holdings, asking staff for early buy-outs, is now telling the remaining employees that they have to take unpaid furloughs.  

President Bush ordered an emergency bail-out of General Motors and Chrysler.

And I don't know about your email inbox, but mine is flooded with even more and more retailer discounts as they see their inventory sit on shelves a mere 5 days before Christmas.

First let me admit several things:  I have never owned an American made car.  I probably should have after my Fiat caught on fire on Christmas Eve while idling in front of a department store that no longer exists in downtown Seattle while my mother did some last minute emergency run, but I went from my beloved loud and cool sports car to a Volvo box, and from there it's been foreign all the way.  Now however, I can say that almost 100% of my Honda Pilot was made or at least assembled domestically, so that counts as American, right?  I also don't subscribe to the Seattle Times or any other local paper, although I am a devoted scanner on-line.   And, I have barely shopped for Christmas, like everyone else, believing the true discounts will happen this week.  So, on my shoulders rests the economic meltdown.

I also need to admit I have been agnostic about the so-called Detroit bail-out.  That is, until I thought about all the 61 year old administrative assistants who are the sole providers of their families, who have been working at GM for 30 plus years and couldn't get another job.  Or the 29 year old receptionist at an auto parts manufacturer, with a high school education and one kid, living in a double-wide...well you get the picture.  It isn't their fault that GM and Chrysler is suffering from years of mis-management, hubris, and top heavy executives who listened to the Greek chorus of underlings telling them everything was just dandy.

There is now a small cheering section for a bail out of the media, primarily print media.  The reasoning goes that without journalists, how will the public know what is going on.  And like the domestic automotive industry, there is logic to a bail out of the 4th Estate.  While I am not a big fan of either of the local papers here in Seattle, they have periodically done a good job of muck racking.  Recently the Post Intelligencer exposed an amazing amount of fraud and corruption in the local port administration.  

But, if we keep printing and throwing money at industries that have been told for years and years that they need to change in order to survive in a capitalistic economy, and they didn't, at what point do we all admit that either our form of capitalism doesn't work, or that the arrogant folks captaining the ships need to sink?   There is a huge risk that the monies spent on the auto bail-out, like the monies spent on the financial bail-out, are only giving life support for a few more months.  Then what?

Perhaps it is just me, but I am beginning to sense that there is something really wrong with the whole system.  That we really need to deeply examine what our economy is based upon, what it is we want our lives to be like, and how we can get there.  We may need to pull back from the global economy (sorry, China, but maybe we need less stuff), figure out how to survive for awhile while we dig deep not only into the infrastructure of our country but the infrastructure of our society.  

In the meantime, hit a sale this week.  Those poor retailers may be knocking on Congress's door in a few weeks asking for a bail-out, too.