Bailout For the Rest of Us

Jason Dobbs, the 29-year-old son of a good friend in Colorado, has been writing about America, and the mess we’re in. And, his perspective is astonishing, in my opinion. Let me share his latest, “Bailout for the rest of us.” -

From the U.S. National Debt Clock, as of the time of sending this email, Outstanding Public Debt is (though in the time to write this sentence only, the “638″ rose to “640″):

$9,734,638,017,326.21

It seems some folks are coming around and acknowledging that we are indeed in a financial crisis.  Perhaps the fundamentals are not sound after all.  Of course, by “fundamentals”, I am not speaking about the American worker, except perhaps those with the big desks on the top floor.  Yes, we are all feeling the crunch, no matter whether our stake is our 401K, our monthly mortgage, airline tickets, or fuel, which had skyrocketed by a record 25% price increase on Monday.

Now I don’t own six homes (I’m six short) or have a slew of dependents.  In fact, my balance sheet is a hand-written ledger; so I wonder: does the U.S. government care about my financial situation?  Am I eligible for bailouts?  It’s a different scale, but these are hard times here too!  It would be nice to know that Uncle Sam (an umbrella of 300 million people like you and me) would foot the bill if I hit rock-bottom, or even got close.  It would be nice to know I wouldn’t have to compromise my lavish life, cutting out condos in Bermuda, matching red sports cars, family safari and cigarette boats, just because I’d made extremely poor (dare say, immoral) decisions for the company I run (into the ground).  Thanks for my incentives bonus.  I don’t want to be bothered by what the board thinks about it.

The previous paragraph was written with biting sarcasm by a fictional writer, who I certainly don’t embody.  This one is in all seriousness.  The way I see it, I have involuntarily invested $233 (current bailout cost divided by number of Americans) into companies with names like Freddie, Fannie, Lehman and AIG!  So where are all of our share certificates?

I’ll tell you what: I’ll trade my shares (they’re worthless anyway).  All I ask for in return is corporate responsibility, and the same of the Federal Reserve chairs who are supposed to govern these crises in advance of their actually happening.  Our recent policy leads me to believe there is less incentive than ever to do good, moral business in the halls of corporate America.

It was one thing to reward CEOs with handouts and bonuses on top of 8-figure salaries even when companies lost money.  It’s another (worse, still) to reward life-boats in the form of federal dollars (okay, life-yachts-with-heli-pads) to these moneyed magnates when the floor falls out.  Once the Maes and Macs turn back to black, what incentive is there not to fall back into signing more risky loans than they can cash?  How many other Dow firms are struggling, and would be better off if they could lose another 100-million this quarter, so they could receive compensation far greater?

Now, I’ll likely never make that kind of money, but it’s nice to know that if I ever do amass such pecuniary fortune, and then blow it on glass-bottomed investments, Ben Bernanke and the board will hand me a check and give me another chance.  America is the land of opportunity, after all.  It just seems that rather than give every American an equal opportunity once, we keep giving the same downtown clowns their opportunities back over and over, while the rest of us are still waiting for the net.

Jason “Sound American Worker” Dobbs

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