THINK WE CAN .com

Let’s cover the “good” first--I don’t know about you but I could use a little lift--our numerous bailouts seem to be working.

By working, I mean we have purchased some time, some breathing room.  Our economy has been brought back from the precipice.  While many people have been badly hurt, financially, it doesn’t appear that the U.S. will slide into a depression.

That is all the bailouts are supposed to do initially—save our economy from a collapse reminiscent of 1930.  Our bankers should soon start lending in greater volume, at least to those with better credit ratings.  When the credit lines that fuel our economy unclog, our great engine of wealth should start to clank and sputter back to life.

But, it is that knocking and misfiring of the once proud machinery of free market capitalism that brings us to the “bad” portion of this column.  No self-respecting motor runs efficiently on bubbles of air, such as the vast quantities of printing-press money which will soon inflate our economy.

We are about to print somewhere between two and four trillion dollars to fund our numerous bailouts.  (Thank goodness for the Asians who buy our paper.)  If we add up Bear Stearns at 30 billion, AIG at 85 billion, the Frannies at 200 billion, the main bailout at 900 billion, the auto industry at 50 billion, bank re-capitalization at 250 billion, another stimulus or two at 100s of billions, along with the usual massive cost overruns for all of the above, and earmarks, we may wind up at the 4 trillion mark.

At that point our national debt would about equal our Gross Domestic product (GDP).  That suggests that these bailouts may not only be our best, but our last hope of remaining the economic leader of planet Earth.  If we don’t structure these bailouts properly, it’s possible the Asians will cease financing any more of our goofy, economic mistakes.  And that brings us directly to our “hopefully, not so ugly” section.

We are about to loan our auto-makers 50 billion dollars.  That’s actually good.  But what may become ugly are the stipulations written into the loan concerning how the automakers can use the money.

Back in 1980, when we gave Chrysler a 675 million bailout (isn’t that a quaint little sum), our government wrote in a stipulation concerning our energy problems.  Our leaders told Chrysler that they must come up with a plan that would be, get this, “an energy savings plan focusing on the national need to lessen U.S. dependence on petroleum.”  Of course, Chrysler and the rest of our automakers, in cahoots with Big Oil, came up with a plan all right.  They tripled our dependence on oil during the next 25 years.  Well, ok, sometimes we have to live and learn.

But what have we learned?  Legislation tied to the current automaker bailout stipulates only that the money be used to “retool old assembly lines and develop advanced, fuel-efficient technology.”  In other words, we are going right back to the business as usual of 30 years ago.  We are about to let a handful of CEOs make some of the most important decisions that have ever faced the United States.

Here we are, arguably, in the worst financial mess in history:  We are slaves to our Middle East oil dependency; we are the largest energy gluttons on earth; we are the most destructive polluters on earth; we are in two wars and considering a couple more, to some degree to satisfy our oil needs; we have just proven we have absolutely no control over our national spending habits; we have just found out that many CEOs of our major corporations can’t be trusted any further than we can throw them; and our international image is about as low as it can go.

So what is our leader’s answer to our lack of any energy policy for the last 30 years?  They are throwing 50 thousand million tax dollars in the laps of a half dozen CEOs in the car business and telling them to solve the problem--again.

Is Congress with us, or out to lunch?  Do they not understand we are in terrible trouble?  Did they skip the U.S. history class that covered the last 30 years?  Is it possible they don’t understand they are supposed to be working on the issue of what we want our cars to burn for fuel, and it might not be gas, or even a hybrid of gas?  Do they not understand that this problem is going to require massive amounts of man-hours, just in the decision and planning stages?

Now, thankfully, we have a few months’ time on this.  Nothing much will happen until after the elections.  That gives us time to reach our leaders and ask them why they are failing to lead.  At the risk of sounding sarcastic, we might ask them if they are aware that we are in an energy crisis.  We might even suggest that this time they need to be creative and find some real answers—just chucking trillions around, like they were billions, is not going to cut it.

We need to tell our Congress that for 30 years they have allowed much of Corporate America to act like a bunch of spoiled bullies who want everybody’s candy.  We need to tell Congress that America’s wild-west version of free-market capitalism has brought much of the world’s economy to its knees.

We need to tell Congress that, sometimes, governments must actually do some governing.