Bailing out is only worth it if you can remove more water than is coming in, and with every "real economy" report that comes in, the waters rise even faster. General Motors is failing fast because it makes stuff nobody wants to buy. In free market terms that means that it goes to the wall. This is the system that the Fed have stood by for all those years as they put their trust in "Free Market Forces". Have they been blinded to the consequences of their actions and think that the solution to failing banks and manufacturers is to simply give them more money without even looking at their balance sheets. Would you trust Paulson or Bernancke to run your hedge fund ? I wouldn't think so. Let's take a look at exactly how much the bailouts come to so far..
| TARP | $700 billion |
| Bear Stearns | $29 billion |
| Detroit Big Three | $25 billion |
| AIG | $150 billion |
| Fannie and Freddie | $200 billion |
| Mortgage-backed secs. | $144 billion |
| FHA Rescue bill | $300 billion |
| JPM for Lehman | $87 billion |
| Fed’s TAF program | $200 billion |
| Commercial paper | $50 billion |
| Fed currency swaps | $740 billion |
Total: $2.7 Trillion
Not a single dime of the trillions of dollars thrown at the problem so far has led to an improvement in the system that it was meant to fix.
Quarterly losses are mounting, Banks, along with manufacturing, are dumping employees and slashing costs to "Weather out the financial crisis" , as if the same crisis can be cured simply by grabbing their employees' tax dollars and then firing them to reduce costs.
It's the people who are being fired who are the engine of the real economy. They're the ones who buy financial services, sign up to interest bearing mortgages, buy General Motors F 150 pickups and groceries down the local Target or Wall Mart. The Financial sector can do whatever it wants with the free money but none of it will benefit the people whom it was meant for originally.
The U.S. is shooting the final bolt at the problem. I say the Final Bolt because when they go to borrow the money from foreign governments and investors they will see that the well is fast drying up. For several trillions of dollars to be raised the amount of Treasuries that will have to be sold will bring the forces of the Free Market to bear. An overabundance of product brings a consequent reduction in price. Can anyone say "Bond Collapse" ? Every foreign investor currently holding the bonds already bought will find themselves with a serious hole in their collective pockets. Uncle Sam will have just maxed out his credit card. Is this the big talking point at the upcoming G20 summit ? Each and every party will have to come out of this meeting with something. Somehow, the foreign debt of the US will have to be accounted for. China and Japan will want to feel that their foreign reserves are actually worth something. The call for a "New World Order" is back in the headlines and heralds a ground shift in how the world will be run. There is no alternative as the old system has gotten to the point that it can no longer survive. The engine that kept the American Dream alive and pushed the growth of China is now gone as the there are no more Golden eggs to be laid. That Duck was shot a while ago by Alan Greenspan and successive Fed chairmen. Keeping an eye on the 10 Year Treasury yield these days has become a nail biting nightmare.
So with the "Bailing out" of moribund institutions, all that has been achieved here is the certainty that things will get steadily worse. Nothing that has been done so far has reduced unemployment, increased tax revenue, increased the value of real estate or stopped the Soup Kitchen queues getting longer. It has all been for nothing, well except for the Royal Bank of Scotland execs who threw themselves a $300,000 champagne party, no doubt to celebrate their collective genius at managing other people's money.
So why throw even more money at the problem when it obviously is not solving the problem ? In the case of General Motors, the loss in unemployment terms could come to 2.5 million. Gone would be the health care that the company provides it's current and former employees. This would seem like a worthy candidate as the fallout is so great that this company is just "too big to fail". But the system has already failed and the inevitability of more company failures is guaranteed...there is no getting away from this unless the system is turned on it's head. The Real Economy has to drive the Means of Production and not the other way round. There is no point in General Motor's burning through all their savings for another year using more tax payers money if , by the end of that year, there is nobody left to buy their products. This simply amounts to an unbelievably gross waste of money. There is no return on this investment and the only upside is that some of the employees will get to keep their jobs and healthcare a little longer.Thousands of jobs will be lost via mergers and cost cutting schemes anyway.
The only realistic way to save General Motors is to invest in what General Motors actually earns money doing; Selling automobiles. This is not achieved by handing them cash, it is achieved in investing in their customers, who at present, are a fast diminishing commodity. The latter is the indespensable component of the system, not the other way round.There are a lot of other Auto companies out there that offer much better products at a lower price and if GM is not up to the mark it's history anway.
If the $2.7 trillion dollars had been invested in rebuilding America's Economy, i.e. creating jobs for the unemployed, reducing capital gains tax, and thus stimulating real economic growth, repairing infrastructure, renovating derelict factories, keeping people in their homes, keeping them mobile and maintain a disposable income, reducing their tax payments, then the return on the investment would have been greater. A new fair banking system, to replace the current racket that has caused wholesale destruction, could have been organised along the lines of Credit Unions where the customers actually own a part of the institution. This would have heralded a step in the right direction to recovery by basing the economy on real value, not CDO's, MBS's and Derivatives, which is just a way of lighing a fire downwind of you and hoping the wind doesn't change. By doing precisely the opposite, the available capital has been squandered and ended up in the pockets of the same people who are responsible for the mess in the first place. Oh and by the way, American Express has just decided to become a bank and feed at the taxpayer trough. Come on down, the water's just fine. One time only Cash Giveaway ! Get it while we still get to keep it !
It's time to stop the deliberate waste of public money and hold our "Benefactors" to account. The "useless eaters" (Henry Kissinger) are watching their hedge fund being managed by the largest coalition of organised crime in human history.
