Driving a Dumb Bargain

By Keith R. Schmitz

How numb are we to the financial bailout?

The Bush administration has handed out $350 billion in emergency money to help out financial organizations in peril and to save our economy from supposedly going over the cliff.

Now what? The AP has inquired into where the money has gone -- something probably not done by our government to date -- and are hearing from the banks...nothing.

But we shouldn't be surprised. Regulation by the Bush administration of practically anything over these past eight years has been non-existent. Yes we can't.

$350 billion. It took the Bush administration about three years to painstakingly blow that much money in Iraq.

But here's the really amusing part.

Outrage II. The Big Three hat in hand approach Congress ask for dough to carry them over their financial troubles. True, these operations could have been better managed but what ran them on the shoals? Tight credit.

Why? Brought to you by...the financial meltdown -- perpetrated by the banks and financial houses propped up by the huge bailout. Your money as the local TV stations like to point out.

The circle will not be unbroken.

Here's where the irony thickens. Congress fell all over itself to help out the fat cats who produce essentially nothing and get rewarded billions for their so-called work.

The American auto industry -- and their unions -- get hauled up on the dissecting table with demands that every dime gets an accounting. These operations manufacturer something. We as a country have been falling behind in that category over the past few years as many of you know.

Blasted the most was the "bloated" union wages. Jim Cramer on Hardball has just pointed out that the pay given out to any one off the heads of the Wall Street firms is as much as a whole factory full of union laborers.

And we fretted after 9/11 that irony was dead.