$150 Billion Here, $30 Billion There, & Pretty Soon...

AIG blew through $150 billion of our tax money in barely five months, sustaining the biggest loss in U.S. corporate history. Now what? Now the company will be receiving another $30 billion from the federal government, at least, in an attempt to keep this Titanic afloat. No guarantees, but I'd be shopping for a dinghy round around now.

This is what happens when you run a really, really big scam, as opposed to a small-time con like an illegal shell game on a city street. In the latter case, cops and prosecutors will hound you, and rightly so. In the former, Washington will simply throw obscene amounts of money at you without even blinking.

In other words, when you work your con game on the street, that's a crime; but when you work your con game on the Street, hey, clear the loading dock, because there's a fleet of Brinks trucks underway to shower you with cash.

Good times.

On a related note: Yesterday, I thumbed through the latest issue of Consumer Reports, which presents CR's annual car reliability data. Remember that Chrysler received four billion dollars in federal money just a couple of months ago, and that its executives were back at the Capitol Hill trough last week, with an urgent request for 5 billion more?

You know where this is going. Chrysler makes the worst new cars on America's roads right now. In the Consumer Reports quality analysis,

[Chrysler] finished at the bottom with "poor performing products" and "sinking reliability results." No Chrysler, Dodge or Jeep vehicle made the magazine's "recommended'' list.

But surely those Chrysler execs promising us better cars weren't talking out of their chutes, were they? Surely, with the automaker's reputation and very existence in the balance, Chrysler has been working on major improvements?

Fuck no.

We're seeing incremental improvements to existing models but little in the pipeline that looks promising,

CR says.

This chart, expertly annotated by yours truly, raises a question that the Obama administration finds itself unable to answer: Whose idea of sound fiscal policy is it to repeatedly and systematically reward abject failure?

Comments

[DarkPhoenix]

Personally, I think the top management of the Big 3 really ought to just be cleaned out and totally fired; no bonuses, no rewards, no nothing. They blew it, they should be gone. Of course, this will never happen.

However, if you're suggesting that it would be better if the Big 3 just ceased to exist, you're dead wrong. If even one of the Big 3 go down, that'll likely be the catalyst for this "recession" to become a full-blown depression, in North America, anyway. A lot of people's livelihoods depend on the continued existence of the Big 3, which is in fact why the government is so willing to bail them out.