Archive for November 25th, 2008

I was listening to a fellow engineer (ancient like me)  on C-Span who became aware of a 4 bbl carburettor which delivered over 30 mpg…. back in 1966. He maintained the patent was purchased and the technology never utilized. The reason, he claimed, is the oil companies were in bed with the automakers and conspired to fleece the public with gas guzzlers. That greedy attitude prevailed until the CEO’s of the big three sank their companies. And now they want the people they exploited for 40 years to bail them out.

Same with the banking elite. The chiefs of our nation’s largest banks approved practices which, on paper, swelled those institutions earnings. They generated hundreds of billions of dollars of down-the-road false promise IOU’s and promptly converted that trash into real cash in their pockets. Now they are taking the gov’t bailout money and using it to pay themselves “deferred” bonuses based on those long gone phony profits. As a parting gift to the greediest pigs in the nation the leaders of that parade, the lame duck’s Bush and cronies, are making sure that happens.

What the unfortunate part of all this exploitation amounts to is the transfer of trillions of public dollars, which could be used for the public good and the health of our nation, to an extremely small portion of our population. Is this smart?