My college professor Michael was a brilliant man. We all rather loved attending his classes, not just because he wasn’t adverse to our munching while he taught our world affairs, history and politics courses but  because he talked of these subjects with such a fire in his eyes. While some professors read straight from the textbook, Michael read straight from memory, from passion and from experience strolling the rows and speaking to each one of us.

One day as I ate a turkey sub and leant forward in my chair, Michael, an older gruff-looking man who wasn’t really gruff at all said with a sparkle in his eye;

 You’re living in interesting times, that’s for sure.” 

Looking back now, a fair while later I know that sparkle meant he knew much more about these times than any of us imagined.

Government Bailouts: Aw Poor Baby!

 Every American has at least $1000 of credit card debt under their belt. That’s not even considering how much they’ve got in car loans, school loans, mortgage, equity or any of that other fun stuff.

Don’t think for a moment that the people own full responsibility for the slouch, uncle Sam carries much of it as well; having spent a cool 1 trillion to jumpstart the economy (and we can see how well that’s been working,)  32 billion after September 11, $200 Billion after Hurricane Katrina, and 500 billion and counting to stop the terrorists.

This isn’t even counting the ridiculous sums they’ve been dishing out like ladled soup every time a big-wig blows the whistle.

A combined total over four occasions of $180 billion to keep afloat AIG Insurance, 236 million for financial giant Baer Sterns many times, 280 billion for Citigroup, 45 billion for the Bank of America and 250 billion+ to the ailing auto industry.

In order to pay its generous tab, the country will borrow $550 billion in the last quarter of 2008 and another $368 billion in the first quarter of 2009. I think it sometimes slips the mind, as things tend to do, that governments don’t have an endless cache of money or borrowing power.

This act of bailing out a company in trouble in exchange for some form of leadership or share in it brings to mind an image of the sinking Titanic being painstakingly emptied out with a bucket, a bucket with a hole in the bottom.