NEW YORK, May 18 – Stanley Bing said on Monday that he plans to sell an undesignated amount of stock in his formerly privately held BingCo., and also plans a note sale to help repay funds he has borrowed from various sources. He also announced that he was taking a $872 million charge against earnings. The notes are being designed by his friend Stu right now, according to Bing, and will be very attractive.

The charge reflects losses on quite a few assets, mostly due to bad investments made after consultation with the best advisors in the business world.

These losses have been a drag on BingCo.’s cash position, which has declined since June ‘08.  The New York-based content company also announced the slashing of weekly dividends to children and pets, and an elimination of bonuses to all employees, of which there really aren’t any. At the same time, BingCo. management hopes the message will resound with Wall Street, which has shown virtually no interest in the Company since it went public some 18 months ago.

“We have no idea what it is the company does,” said Reed Barfinger of Barfinger & McGuffin, a firm that makes itself available for quotes to reporters who call it. “This lack of clarity used to be a huge asset, particularly in the online content world, but now people want at least an ounce or two of steak along with their sizzle.”

This could spell potential trouble for BingCo. In pre-market trading, the company’s shares fell about 2 percent to $0.14. Their 52-week high is $0.15, set last July 23.

BingCo. Executive Chairman and Chief Everything Officer Stanley Bing said in a statement that he will use the proceeds from the sale of shares and notes to pay back the $23,000 loan he received from CitiBank to finance the construction of a paved driveway at company headquarters.

Bing did not specify the size of the debt offering but said it would not be backed by the federal government, to which he also expects to owe some money very shortly in the form of a quarterly estimate.

Bing was among the institutions that recently underwent a “stress tests” of their ability to handle a deep recession, and was among those found to be quizzical. 

BingCo. does not give guidance. The company did however indicate it expects to be alive at the end of the year, mostly by accumulating more debt in order to pay the debt that comes with responsibilities and consequences.

The sky is blue. The trees are green. The birdies is on the wing. And the majority of our banks have flunked their stress tests. Does that make them sad? Nope. Are we worried? Not at all. Because while they are stressed, they are not stressed as badly as we might have feared. Two facts leap out. First, while 10 of 19 of our fiduciary institutions require some form of additional cash to keep from fainting, all they need, in aggregate, is a measly $75 billion.

Compared to the numbers we’ve been seeing lately in bailouts and fearful predictionary bloviage, why, that’s a mere bag of shells! And it turns out they don’t even want the money! “No thank you, Uncle Tim,” they are saying. “We’re gonna be okay after all.” Can you imagine?  

Best of all, it turns out that even if you take the very worst-case scenario, potential losses in this formerly fetid corner of our financial sector would reach only $599 billion. Not a T? Only a B? Ha! We sneeze at such numbers. 

Speaking of sneezing, it also turns out that we’re all probably not going to die of swine flu, at least this week. 

The fact is, there’s just so much darned good news around that I think we should all open our hermetically sealed windows right now, lean out over whatever avenue we work on, and no, not jump, just breathe in that nice spring air, which appears to be not quite as badly loaded with toxic hydrocarbons as we had feared. 

Who knows? We may have a panic gap here all of a sudden. What should we freak out about next, do you think? Should we look back once again to ascertain which was the worst in our lifetime, so that we can use that knowledge of the past, as economists do, to prognosticate the future? 

To examine this issue scientifically, I visited a cool new website that helps those trying to determine hierarchies of just about anything, scientifically, you know. My assessment of the worst panic of our collective time can be found here.  See if you agree.

Okay, I hear you. You’re sick of the bad vibes. You want to get your collective head out of the community toilet. Stuff you’re tired of hearing about: bailouts, stinky hedge fund shenanigans, executive compensation, retention bonuses for guys who weren’t retained, criminal excesses by shady Wall Street buttheads, economic prognostications offered by those who didn’t prognosticate anything when it needed to be prognosticated.

You’re ready to move on. The innate optimism of the American spirit is beginning to bubble bigtime within your breast. Enough of this gloom and doom! It’s time to have a burger, down a couple of brewskies, hit the new ground running.

You’re not stupid, of course. You see the unemployment rate. You see the sales figures for the first quarter. You know that if you look, there is dismal swamp as far as the eye can see. But maybe not. Not for those who see just beyond that grim horizon. Over that rim, there is dawn, the kind of light that only those who look can perceive.

Proof of this fact comes in a new poll from CBS News and the New York Times. The Times reports that:

“… the number of people who said they thought the country was headed in the right direction jumped from 15 percent in mid-January, just before Mr. Obama took office, to 39 percent today, while the number who said it was headed in the wrong direction dropped to 53 percent from 79 percent. That is the highest percentage of Americans who said the country was headed in the right direction since 42 percent said so in February 2005…”

This tiny new embryo of optimism is fragile. A vast majority of people are still worried about their jobs and are cutting expenses back as much as possible. That’s just common sense.

But you know how it is. One of our national characteristics is a certain kind of creative Attention Deficit Disorder. We can’t stay any one way for very long. And we’ve been in the dumps for quite some time now.

Disregarding stupidity and evil for a moment, a huge element of what got us here is pure psychology and decay in attitude. Repair that, ladies and gentleman, and the rest will surely follow. And you know. Even if it doesn’t, getting there just might be a whole lot more fun.

On April 1, Tim Geithner, speaking from the big G20 love fest, told Katie Couric that he would certainly consider replacing the CEOs of any bailed-out entity that the administration felt wasn’t performing up to snuff. I don’t think there’s anybody out there who doesn’t think that’s a good idea. You take the money. You do the job. If you don’t, so long Charley, right? Right. 

This will undoubtedly leave a huge CEO gap in a number of large institutions. In many cases, the government will probably try to fill the void with an executive who has been on the corporate scene before, as they did at General Motors. There’s certainly a rationale for that. The anointed one knows the company in question. He has some experience in the trenches. At the same time, isn’t that individual likely to be as much part of the problem as the solution? The Who said it: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Is that what we’re really after?

I submit that there are many qualified individuals from outside each of these banks, car companies, insurance behemoths and other corporate states that are now at least partially owned by We, the People. I believe I am one of them. 

Following are my qualifications to be a New Bailout CEO: 

• I have many nice suits and would not need government help to acquire any before ascending to my new post; 
• I have lost some hair over the years and now am required, on bad days, to do a moderate comb-over; 
• I don’t really understand a lot about the economy, relying on others for their wisdom, and would therefore not put up any resistance to virtually any plan that Mr. Geithner, Mr. Ratner or Mr. Ed, for that matter, might have in mind; 
• I can read a Teleprompter very well, and will not go off-point, ever, no matter what; 
• I can still button my jacket when I sit down, which is more than I can say about a lot of these guys; 
• I believe that Business can come back and am willing to say so; 
• I have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, which is clearly a qualification for haute executive status; 
• I am a big fan of Mr. Obama and all his guys; 
• I don’t mind taking a Town Car to appointments and have been doing so for many years, and would by no means insist on a stretch limo like some of these other bozos; 
• I fly commercial all the time and would promise to continue to do so; 
• I’m good at a cocktail party; 
• I like to delegate the important stuff. 

Of course, the compensation would have to make sense. I know the limits, which have been well-publicized. But what’s the upside?

You guys aren’t going to like this, but you know who I feel sorry for? Edward Liddy. That’s right. He’s the guy the government appointed to run AIG after Hank Greenberg and his gang set it up to crash and burn. Today Greenberg popped up on television like a vicious Mini-Me to pile on the dead bunny.

Greenberg left in a scandal in 2005 after setting up the business unit that got AIG into all of its trouble. You know that operation. The Financial Products group that came up with all those cute derivatives backed with now-toxic instruments. And here he is this morning, jabbering away like a wise elder statesman. Pfui.

This was only slightly worse than the drubbing that Mr. Liddy took at the hands of the suddenly irate congressmen in Washington on Wednesday. Many of our senior legislators had good points to make, no question about it. The situation is dire, and certainly subject to Federal review, as it was years ago when the SEC was supposed to be regulating the industry. Most of the politicians acquitted themselves well. But at times the hectoring got out of hand, to the point where you might have thought, if you were a cynical type of person, that these members of Congress were trying to come up with the quintessential sound bite that would land them on the evening news. Sure enough, at the end of the day, it was the showboat from Massachusetts whose “have you no shame!” diatribe did get the most airtime. I guess he knows his business, too.

Of course, Edward Liddy isn’t blameless. He obviously made some very bad decisions. But he is only the last in a series of managers – both at AIG and elsewhere – who has done so. It’s pretty evident noxious stuff has been going on everywhere for years. The culture of compensation of which he was a part is so deeply ingrained in corporate culture now that even Tim Geithner, the guy who is supposed to oversee the bailouts, didn’t pop up a huge red flag when he first heard about AIG’s contractual obligations to its disgraced lunkheads. 

Worst of all, for the poor doofus on the stand, is the thought that you’ve got to know is running through his head as everybody is saying nasty things about his mother: “I’m doing all this for one dollar a year.” 

Man. I would do it for less than five. As long as it came with a guaranteed bonus.

So now Congress is going to go after the AIG bonuses, responding to the rage that most sentient beings are feeling right now about the whole question. One suggestion is that the Government simply impose a 100% tax on the sums received by A.I.G. bonus heads. This would seem to be a logical extension of the Government’s current policy of taking about 52% of all my income. Still, it’s a dramatic solution to the problem.

I’m just as mad any anybody else at those numbskulls at A.I.G., of course.  It really stinks. You have to wonder how a “retention bonus” is meant to affect the performance of a manager who has already left the organization. Like, that’s just stupid.

If you want to give me some bulls**t rationale for why you’re going to suck up billions of dollars and spew it out to your colleagues and pals, come up with something credible or at least appropriately truculent, like “We did it. We’re keeping it. If you don’t like it, fire us and pay us our contractually-mandated severance packages.”  That at least is a truthful presentation of the executive mind-set.

Still, you have to worry a little about the policy implications. Does the government – even in pursuit of fairness and equity – have the right to implement new, punitive laws against individuals who have displeased it, and Us? New laws that prevent such things happening in the future, no question. But laws that retroactively impose justice kind of make me nervous for some reason. 

In the case of A.I.G., the government owns 80% of the company now, so it’s easy simply to assert that We the People can pretty much do what we want. And maybe we should. There’s no question that taxpayers didn’t fork over all that money so that individuals could haul it away in shopping bags as they exited the building they helped to wreck.

But you’ve got to think that Business is in for a really rough ride from here on in. Sweeping in on the heels of what all these moron financial types and other brain-damaged economists have wrought will be  a host of new laws, new regulations, new ways to protect the nation and its citizens from the greed and collective criminal mind of Wall Street, its denizens and its running dogs. And we deserve whatever we get.

Newton’s Third Law states that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. He was talking about physics. But it’s equally applicable to less scientific stuff as well.

Terror, for instance, breeds repression and a more surveillant society, one more concerned about safety and security and less about personal liberty.  In the wake of 9/11, this country did many things out of anger, fear and a desire to hold those guilty accountable. Some were reasonable. Others, in retrospect, were not.  Equal and opposite reactions are not always as good as they first may appear. 

Bernie Madoff is not the only criminal who prowled Wall Street. In many ways, he’s just the fall guy, a dramatic extension of the way business was done every day in the big craps game. In these A.I.G. guys, we have a perfect example of the global business culture that ran things for a long time and still does. Their very presence cries out for retribution, and Newton must be served.

Let me ask you a question: If you were a passenger on the Titanic, and somehow managed to wangle your way ahead of the women and children onto a life boat, would you demand to take your luggage?

I don’t think that’s a far-fetched comparison. Here we have a massive company that hit a huge iceberg – this one of its own devising – and just as it’s about to sink under the water it receives a timely and enormous rescue… and the guys who ran it into trouble in the first place are now leaving the boat with their silverware, furs and jewelry intact.

Of course, these are insurance guys. I don’t know what we all expect of them. In my experience, insurance guys are trained to justify just about anything.  Last month my health insurance company told me that a 5 a.m., six-hour visit I made last summer to the Emergency Room of my local hospital was not covered because it was not an emergency. It’s not that hard for people trained in that kind of reasoning to tell themselves that they’re entitled to their legally-promised bonuses.

The thing that’s interesting in this case is how many AIG executives seem to have mandatory boni in their contracts. In my experience, perhaps the top five guys in any corporation usually have that kind of protection. Here we seem to have an entire executive class that has the clause in their deals. I guess wish I had their attorney or worked in an industry that while it is so rigorous with others is so generous with itself.

There are, I suppose, only two solutions to this problem going forward. The first is for Congress to immediately pass a law that any firm that receives bailout money will be under certain constraints:

• No bonuses not approved by the taxpayers;
• No boondoggles to which the taxpayers are not invited;
• All executive expense accounts to be reviewed by Warren Buffett.

The other solution is more difficult: Trust in the people who run our financial system must be restored… one step at a time.

Wall Street thinks its problems are related to objective measures such as debt, equity, long and short selling, broken models, secular issues afflicting certain key industries. That’s nonsense. The reason why everybody is off of the investment train is a lot more simple. People hate Wall Street and the business people who work in or around it. 

It’s not hard to see why. It’s pretty clear that as things stand the interests of Wall Street are not those of working corporations and the people who are employed there. Americans are enraged and disgusted because they were sold a bill of goods and now they see the light. At the end of the great, decades-long confidence game the Street has run, we are all out of that commodity. No confidence, no investment.

How to restore that trust? I can think of one thing that could be done immediately. It’s not easy. It’s totally counter-intuitive. It will never happen. But it would be an excellent gesture. 

The AIG guys should renounce their bonuses. Their management and the government have no legal standing to do so. They’re going to have to do it for themselves. For all of us.

I say this in full knowledge of how improbable and difficult this would be. I know a whole lot of people, myself included, who depend on their bonus to live. It’s not a frill. It’s part of our compensation that we wait for, plan for, put our kids to school with. We don’t have yachts. We don’t have polo ponies. We have mortgages and child support and elderly cocker spaniels who have kidney trouble. That’s what our bonuses pay for.

But most of us don’t work for companies that have screwed up the entire economic system of the world. Most of us don’t work for corporations that require the People to step in and save their butts.  

The effect of such a renunciation would be immediate and dramatic. “Gee,” people around the world would say. “Maybe American business people aren’t total ethical morons after all.”

It’s a first step. Somebody has to take it. Why not the proud, courageous insurance men and women of AIG, standard-bearers on our collective  march toward a new tomorrow?

If you take my money, you have to abide by my rules. Isn’t that what your parents always used to say when you were an unruly teenager? You can’t have that girl or boy in your room with the door closed. You can’t smoke in the house. You can’t have any contraband in your desk, even if you’re just holding it for a friend. And you can’t pay out billions of dollars in bonuses to your pals.

Oops, that last part just snuck in there. But the comparison is apt. These bad boys have taken a bunch of dough from the family kitty. This morning it looks like another $30 billion is going to prop up AIG, the guys who are supposed to be so thoughtful and austere that they are qualified to prop up the rest of us. And still the stories of business-as-usual in the largesse arena keep emerging. Recently Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, citing that enterprising source, TMZ, went off on one bank who had recently received a billion-dollar bundle from the Feds, only to turn around and hold its long-scheduled boondoggle in Los Angeles, featuring salmon, steak, and performances by Cheryl Crow and Chicago.

Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?

I have a simple idea to make sure they do. I suggest that part of the national plan for recovery should be the creation of a National Handout Controller. In corporate terms, this would be the guy who goes over the expense accounts of every person who works for firms that have received bailout money. I know there are probably offices that purport to do this right now. But the establishment of such a dedicated position would speak to the serious nature of the function.

You don’t have to be told how it works, not if you have an expense account and work for a company that has its head on straight. You go to dinner at a nice restaurant with a client and have a $300 bottle of wine. You get a call. What’s up with the wine? Wasn’t there a $100 bottle that would have impressed your companion just as much? You order Castle Wolfenstein for your cell phone, so you can kill Nazis while you wait for the next plane. You get a call. Sure, it’s only $2.99 a month, but it’s clearly personal. We don’t kill Nazis here. We make plastic hangers. And you take a $50,000,000 plane to Washington to ask for more money, every hour in the air costing thousands and thousands of dollars? Guess what. Next time, fly commercial. And you can pick up the tab for your lack of taste and judgment, too. That will be $50,000, please. The corporation will take a check.

We can sure use it.

Oh, the whining over fine dining that’s been heard in the all-but empty bistros of Manhattan as the last expense account executives cut into their exquisitely tender veal and complain about the Obama salary cap!

Sure, a limit on comp will change the make-up of the individuals who surface for the top slots in banking and industry. And that’s a bad thing why? If a company needs a bailout — hey, let’s call it what it is: a handout — shouldn’t it come with certain strings attached? Son, if you want this money for college, you’re not going to be spending it on a car. Right? Only a wayward teen would expect otherwise.

Is $500,000 base, with a bonus to be decided upon performance, an unrealistic sum? It seems so to people accustomed to the good life that was promised to them in business school and the lucre they accumulated during the boom. But where does it fall in the vast scheme of things?

A little review of the factsyields some perspective. The numbers seem kind of unbelievable to me, but then I live in a variety of charming urban areas where a dinner for two that comes in under $100 is considered an eyepopping steal.

Median base salaries:

Elementary School Teacher: $49,979

Physician: $147,480

Manager: $128,540

Attorney: $88,944 (who are these guys?)

Architect: $56,637

Registered Nurse: $61, 603

Now granted, these are median salaries. The 75th percentile of these jobs, which are arguably every bit as important in our social scheme as that of Banker, are about 20% higher than the median in each case. And of course there are those at the top of their professions that make a lot more. But this gives you some notion of what a base of $500,000 means to just about everybody but a Banker.

I have an idea. How about we open the top slots at failing fiduciary institutions to Teachers, Architects and Registered Nurses? Let’s leave attorneys out of it. They’re already in there somewhere making hay while the the sun don’t shine, I bet.

First of all, let me say that I’m supportive of President Obama’s measures to limit executive pay in companies that accept new bailout money. There are loopholes that I’m sure smart guys will be able to finesse a bit, but for the most part it limits the comp of senior executives working in such firms to $500,000. Now, this may seem like a lot of money to people who do more than push various colors of paper around for a living, but in actuality, for a banker, you might as well be offering a salary of $1 per year. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but not by much. 

So I’m trying to figure out who will be attracted to the job of running the next big bank to suck up some more of the public weal. Who will NOT be taking the job will be anybody who has considered themselves a banker up until now, guys who were trained for it and are now in mid-career, who have built up lives dependent on the kind of money that bankers, up until now, could expect to draw down. It’s not only the base salary that’s a laughable pittance to such individuals. It’s the fact that bonuses will be tied directly to performance, and closely monitored by angry shareholders who have only one criteria for executive success: the stock price. 

Do you have any idea how irrational the stock market is? Great, profitable companies languish in the single digits. Idiotic brain farts out in left field are rewarded with huge multiples. Hoards of lemmings skitter back and forth, driven over a variety of cliffs by fear and greed. Would you want your comp based on that? I don’t think so. Not when there are so many other things you can do. Like be a consultant. 

I figure there are three kinds of people who will be running bailout institutions: 

1. Rich guys who have already made their nuts and who will provide either gravitas or branding power to their crumbling edifices, presiding over a cadre of hungry young pups who do all the work. Think Alan Greenspan, Warren Buffett, Donald Trump. 
2. Young business school graduates who want to make a name for themselves in both Finance and in the governmental functions that will be overseeing that industry; where these dudes used to gravitate to McKinsey to make their bones, they’ll now hop into banking and do a little workout samba on those bongos. 
3. Politicians with a background in accounting. Think about it. Five hundred grand is a molehill to a real banker. But it’s a mountainous pile to a politician. The top job in the field pays less, doesn’t it? 

It remains to be seen whether any of these will be qualified to lead the large fiduciary entities that form the foundation upon which our economy rests. On the other hand, how could they do any worse than the bozos who took all that money to screw things up?

Experts seem relatively unified, if such a thing is possible, on the issue of direct economic stimulus to every taxpayer. They’re against it. If all the various monies now being set aside were used, the check for each of us would come to nearly 10 grand, apparently. But the economists don’t think it’s a good idea.

The problem is that given all the bad news, past and future, most of us, it is feared, would simply do what the big banks have done with their bailouts: tuck them away for a rainier day. They were supposed to take their money and fork it over to people who wanted to borrow it. Ha! they said. We’re keeping it warm and dry, except for the cash we’re earmarked for bonuses. Smart bankers. They care about the economy. They know that if you give an executive hundreds of millions of dollars they will spend a bunch of it, and that will stimulate everybody.

Us smaller fry, it is thought, would take the $10,000 from Uncle Sam and put it in one of those teetering institutions, rather than putting it back into the economy where it is so desperately needed. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday, people aren’t spending enough, inventories are rising, the system is going stagnant and we’re all doomed. Or perhaps that was Sunday. It doesn’t matter. The gist is clear. We’re all very selfish and if we got a bailout of any kind we wouldn’t be responsible citizens and spend it right away.

Well I, for one, would like to assure the government that, should I receive $10,000 as a part of the national recovery effort, I would spend every penny of it. Possible areas of expenditure include:

• Blind auctions for certain educational and religious institutions
• New shocks for old Volvo
• Vacations (domestic)
• Cost of maintaining elderly cocker spaniel
• Expenses associated with under-compensated semi-adult children
• Heat, electricity, gas, etc.
• Grass-fed beef
• Wine

This is of course just a cursory list. I’m sure I could generate a whole bunch more if I really thought about it. Just sitting here I’m probably spending money on something I don’t even know about. In fact, 10 grand might not do it. Give me 20 and I’ll really show ‘em something.

How about you. Are you willing to take the pledge? Write your Congressman. Tell him or her that you are committed to spending whatever they give us. If all of us come together in one giant shout, perhaps we’ll get the job done to the benefit of us all.  Have you seen the price of dinner and movie these days?

In the huge Bank of America (BAC) fiasco/bailout/tailspin, there are a lot of people at whom it would be tempting to wave a wobbly finger. Ken Lewis is taking a lot of heat, and it’s not hard to see why. His decision to purchase Merrill Lynch back last fall is looking like the ultimate investment in a money pit. 

This morning it was revealed that during the last quarter of 2008, Merrill lost $15 billion. That’s a lot of money. I wonder what their security analysts would have to say about that. They’re still publishing their opinions about other companies, for some reason. Perhaps they would care to run some models and offer their views about their own?

Parenthetically, and apropos of very little, I do think it would be a good idea for executives in bad odor with the media, their shareholders, regulators and the public, to update their headshots when the first scent of smoke begins to waft through their hermetically sealed windows. The beamish one of Mr. Lewis, placed next to articles questioning his perspicacity, does him no favors.  Just a thought.

What does fascinate me, however, is the role of the consultants hired to investigate the wisdom of the deal from the shareholders’ perspective. As FORTUNE Senior Writer Colin Barr points out elsewhere on this site:

… CEO Ken Lewis’ decision to buy Merrill isn’t the only thing that looks questionable now. So does the advice he and the BofA board got on the hastily arranged Merrill deal from the bank’s advisers, Fox-Pitt Kelton and J.C. Flowers & Co.

The financial advisers offered opinions calling the deal fair to Bank of America shareholders… What’s more, the bank’s shareholders paid the advisers $20 million for the opinions – which the firms formulated after investigating Merrill Lynch’s condition over a single, hectic weekend.

$20 million bucks for… how many hours of work do you think that represented? Let’s be generous and say 1000, spread out over a lot of people. That means the firms were being paid $20,000 per hour for their work. That’s fine. Everybody has their price, and that was theirs. But don’t you think somebody should get a rebate? Do consultants ever give those? Perhaps not. Anway, why should they? They did what was required of them, after all, what is always required of such folks.

They told management what it wanted to hear.

Looking over the list of poor saps who were hoovered into the Madoff money vacuum, it occurred to me that we might have found an excellent beneficiary of at least some of Mr. Paulson’s remaining bailout bonanza.

Why not make the straggling losers in the ponzi parade sign a statement attesting to their credulity, greed and overall foolishness, issue them each a nice, pointy dunce cap - and then help them out with a piece of what they’ve lost? Sure, we can take off a significant percentage of their ill-taken losses as punishment for their sins. Then let’s help them.

I spoke to my broker yesterday. She’s in Southern Florida. It seems that a lot of the old people there who are living out their lives on their investments, assembled after a lifetime of work, are now selling their modest, two-bedroom condos and pawning their jewelry. They’re broke. Imagine that. Eighty years old and without a dime to your name, all because you had to get in on the latest sure thing from the guy everybody trusted. It’s not right.

Likewise, a bunch of very credible charities are sucking the hose, funds that helped indigent widows and holocaust survivors and people suffering from illness so dire that they will be gone long before Madoff will have to spend one night where he belongs. And why is the guy still walking around on Park Avenue, anyway? Don’t they have jails for such people? 

Anyhow, even after Mr. Bush dribbles a little rain on the parched Big Three, there’s still going to be hundred and hundreds of billions just sitting around collecting minimal interest. You’ve got a whole bunch of victims out there who are guilty of nothing more than believing in the risk/reward game. Didn’t we all?

Please, Mr. Paulson! Have a heart!  It’s Christmas!

Many smart people are busy deriding it. There are a host of philosophical, political and economic idealogues, each with a dozen excellent reasons, postulates and theories, backed up by cogent analysis of the first order, riding into battle against it. But it’s going to pass. And I’m glad.

I don’t care if the Detroit business model is wrong right now. I don’t care if their leadership is the biggest bunch of bozos who ever drew breath. The fact is, everybody looks kind of stupid right now, don’t they? In fact, the whole game has changed for just about everybody, no matter what part of the supply chain you’re in. A guy can’t even sell a Senate seat in peace and quiet anymore. And you can’t allow an entire industry to go down because its leadership is lousy, can you? Think where your industry would be if that standard was applied.

So if we’re really gonna bail out the big three in spite of all the good reasons not to, I’m glad, for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with all the good reasons not to.

First of all, people work there. A lot of people. Yeah, they belong to Unions, which are part of the problem and should be punished! Them and their damn high salaries. So tempting to see them whacked around a little, huh? Those super-rich blue collar workers with their high-paying Union jobs. Let’s get ‘em! And their families. And their communities. And the stores they shop at. And the schools that their property taxes help to keep going.

Well, I guess if there’s a bailout of some kind, the Unions are going to have to eat some of the salary and benefits they’ve won from Management over the years. They’ll have to, to make the system level again, probably. In the meantime? Bail them out, I say. Each and every one of them. Let’s make sure they don’t lose their homes and feed the vortex of disaster. I don’t care if we’re investing in a broken down model or helping people who make more money than you think they should. I like the idea of several hundred thousand people staying on the job, paying their mortgages, buying flat-screen TVs, shoes and hamburger.

I also like the idea of the Big Three, back in some kind of business now, really having to sell a whole bunch of those ill-considered and very comfortable gas-guzzlers that are so reprehensible and dumb to have built but still, smell very nice when they’re new. Because in order to sell them, they’re going to have to advertise on all the media that are right now sucking the hose and missing the massive chunk of revenue automotive advertising represents. I like to think of all those ads keeping Madison Avenue up nights working, instead of laying people off, and all the television, cable, radio, Internet and other media people running to fill the orders, earning enough bread to purchase one of the idiotic vehicles we really shouldn’t be making.

I like the idea of money being spent on companies that make something other than money, that produce a product other than a financial instrument, and maybe even putting a halt, even temporarily,  to the incredible, screaming descent in which we are now engaged.

Finally, I don’t believe anybody’s analysis about anything, frankly.  A couple of weeks ago, people were ridiculing the idea of simply printing more money to stablize the economy. Stupid! Boneheads! Simplistic boobies! Yesterday I read a Nobel Prize winning economist who suggested we do precisely that, and cited several excellent sources for his view. He may be right. He may be wrong. Who knows? I do know one thing. I know that nobody knows.

In short, there’s no opinion out there right now that’s worth more than any other. If ignorance was bliss we’d all be tap dancing down Wall Street.

So until we figure out what’s really going on? Let’s try to use the money we have to help the greatest number of people. And let’s start from the bottom, for a change.

Just a question I’ve been thinking about since yesterday… What do you think the boys at the Big Three auto companies were thinking about when each took his own private jet to Washington to ask for help? A number of subsequent queries suggest themselves:

• Are they stupid?
• Assuming that they are NOT completely stupid, didn’t anybody consider this might not be the absolutely best move, at least in terms of the optics?
• If somebody DID think about it, did they voice the opinion and were then overruled?
• Why were they overruled?
• If nobody thought about it, WHY didn’t they? Granted, the thousands of dollars spent in this form of transport have no discernible impact on the billions that are under review, but still…
• If they were going to fly private, why didn’t they all go in ONE jet? Do they hate each other that much? Or couldn’t they agree on which jet they would take?
• Did they think nobody would find out?
• Why do senior officers of corporations get so out of touch? Is it a part of the job description, or do they devolve as they serve their terms?
• Do politicians fly commercial? If so, why don’t I ever see any?
• Are senior officers of Detroit auto companies considered part of Middle America?
• Should we blame an entire industry for the failings of its senior officers?

Tell me what you think.

One of my very hostile but articulate readers, Mike from Spokane, gives me both barrels between the eyes this morning. I think Mike thinks I won’t publish it, because I’m a panty-waist business type swilling gin at breakfast. Here’s what he says:

Bing…with all due respect (as you recently stated to me), you have no idea what you’re frigging talking about. You, and corporate America, are so far removed from the realities of Main Street America, that you continue to confuse your personal financial comfort concerns with those of middle America.

I fully expect that you will delete all posts contrary to your limited and self-serving view, but at least you (or one of your corporate lackeys) will have to read statements that reflect what most of America regards as self-evident…that expanding and supporting corporate greed through taxpayer handouts for incompetence is no path out of the mess we’re in. Not much satisfaction from this end, but at least you, or one of your timorous syncophants, will know that your world has finally sunk below used car salesmen in terms of universal public esteem.

Finally, fearing being one step from flinging fries at the local ‘In&Out’ joint may play well while swilling $20 cocktails in some high-end Manhattan watering hole, but it is a daily reality for millions of Americans who invested billions in now collapsed 401K plans.

Mike, it’s always a pleasure to hear from you. But sometimes it’s hard to see things clearly with so much blood in your eye. I sent my corporate lackeys and timorous sycophants out of the room. This is between you and me.

First of all, this ”corporate America” that’s on a different plane that “Main Street America” is a myth. I have worked in theaters, as a cab driver, in small companies, large corporations and mega-watt global behemoths, and they are all the same. They are people working for a living. And in one and all, it’s the most dysfunctional that run the place. Whatever the gig, we work, we try to enjoy our jobs, and we go home. Guess where our homes are? Main Street.

Secondly, I come from Illinois. So I don’t want to hear a lot of pompous, self-aggrandizing bushwah about middle America, either. We all live here. We are all Americans. None of us are more American than any others. We are all equally American. Let’s move on.

I understand that you need to see people like me, because I sometimes wear a tie and work in an office, as rich, shallow mofos who deserve to be pilloried, in order to keep on feeling that righteous anger of yours. But in my opinion you’d do better to see all of us (except the very rich and unsuccessful putzes who whipped up this soggy mess) as citizens of the same troubled system. Everybody I know is very nervous about their jobs. Nobody I know has a pension. We worry about our stock price, and our families, and our friends, and what the hell is going to happen to us if the big companies that provide so many people with jobs aren’t helped out right now.

We don’t sympathize with the idiots who have gotten us all into such trouble. And we certainly don’t want THEM to benefit from any assistance that is given to these failing auto makers, banks, insurance companies, whatever. We just don’t want the entire ship to sink, taking the lives of all on board, because the captain and his crew are dolts, numbskulls and screw-ups, or because politicians, responding to the anger of their constituents, continue to follow instead of lead.

Take the miscreants out behind the barn! Line them up against the wall! Pepper them with heat-seeking projectiles! But when you’re done with that satisfying exercise, let’s try to save the American auto industry, the banks where we keep our money, and probably the mortgages of all those people who believed they could buy a home with no money down because a greedy guy in a suit told them they could.

Personally, at this point I’m not a big believer in the “free market” approach. It seems to benefit the guys in charge of the marketplace. And that’s not us. And by “us” I mean we, the people. And by the way: MY 401K blows, too.

Thanks for writing, Mike. Say hi to Spokane.

Yesterday Mr. Paulson told Congress that the bailout was working and that he was “very proud of the decisive actions by Treasury, the Fed and the FDIC to stabilize our financial system,” adding, ”We have done what was necessary as facts and conditions in the market and economy have changed.”

I am put in mind of two things.

The first is what happened when this nation finally found it impossible not to exit the War in Vietnam. Given a number of other alternatives that would not have played very well in the media, the Nixon Administration simply decided to declare victory and go home. The guys who didn’t believe we had actually achieved victory weren’t fooled. Those who wanted to believe we had in fact done so were mollified somewhat. And we did what we did. So it’s kind of like that.

The second thing Mr. Paulson’s statement conjured up, like a madeleine dipped into a glass of tea, was something said by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the middle of the worst part of that same war, well before it was coming to its eventual denouement. ”War is over if you want it,” they said. Of course, it wasn’t. It was just a slogan… propaganda… but since John was a smart guy, I always believed that he was sort of saying that intentions and positive thinking sometimes yields results. So… right on, Mr. Paulson. Power to the people and all that.

Except not. Because on Monday, that very same Mr. Henry Paulson told the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council that he intended to keep the more than $400 billion left in the bailout fund in reserve. He said, somewhat in line with his statements to Congress, that things were going well, that the economy was stabilizing, and that, now that the banks and AIG (AIG) are partially taken care of, he’s going to leave it up to the Obama administration to figure out what to do with the rest of the dough. So no handouts from Paulson for GM (GM), which employs all those poor people, and no immediate money for anybody else, either.

This disappointed me. I was so looking forward to my share of the payout just in time to save Christmas. Weren’t you?

When the Founders got together to establish this great Republic of ours, they had certain clear goals in mind. Here they are:

• form a more perfect Union,
• establish Justice,
• insure domestic Tranquility,
• provide for the common defense,
• promote the general Welfare,
• and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.

Throughout our history, this vision of what government should do has changed, grown and shrunk depending on the level of heart, spleen or brains any given generation of the ruling class has under their wigs, vests or pinstripes.

For instance, back in the 19th Century, “promoting the general welfare” might very well have meant keeping the poor locked up in houses especially designed to keep them off the streets, and to start children working at jobs that stunted their growth by the age of eight.

We don’t do that any more, pretty much. Since the 1930s, it’s been pretty much the common assumption among decent Americans that it’s better to provide a safety net for people, that no matter what philosophical universe you inhabit it’s not good for children to go to bed hungry or to have the poor parts of town burn down every ten years or so.

Same for old people. They tend to need more medical care than others, so Government provided a program to make sure that when they get sick they don’t have to wander around with a tin cup and cane pretending to be blind like they used to do.

Education, too. At some point a while back, it became clear that not everybody could afford to send their kids to private school, so somebody got the idea of creating schools that anybody could go to for free. We all pay for them, of course, some of us more willingly than others, in the form of taxes.

And forget about the whole “provide for the common defense” thing. The Government could probably provide every single one of us with a nice Z3 Roadster if we didn’t have to do that.

As society grows and changes, then, our idea of the proper role of Government — what it needs to do to protect the needy, the weak, the powerless, the downtrodden, the huddled masses and their friends — mutates and shifts along with it.

Today we can add another group to the list of those who require intercession by We the People: Big Banks that have mismanaged the deposits entrusted to them by their customers. Two hundred and fifty billion dollars to once-proud burghers like Citigroup (C), Goldman Sachs (GS), Bank of America (BAC) and JP Morgan Chase (JPM). It seems like a small price to pay to make sure that none of these banks go hungry, or are forced to spend a night on the streets begging for the price of a martini — which can go as high as $20 in many major cities.

Many of us complain about Government and how it’s gotten too big, or intrudes too much on the free markets that we love so much. Now many of those who have complained the loudest are breathing a sigh of relief that Uncle Sam has once again opened his heart and his pockets to them in their time of need.

They’re first right now in the big breadline.  Let’s hope they leave a few crumbs for the rest of those who need a bit of a hand now and then.

I thought it would be interesting to ask you for your opinion on this fine post-bailout afternoon, as the Stock Market sinks not-too-slowly into the west. 

This morning I felt bored by the bailout. Now I’m just scared by it.

So I’m asking you: Why has everybody lost confidence in just about every security in every sector? I can think of a lot of reasons why people are nervous, but what’s the hot button that’s cooling everything off? Is it the news that the FDIC is now insuring accounts for up to $250,000, making our savings more, rather than less safe? Or don’t we believe in the FDIC anymore? That would be pretty horrible. But there’s no objective reason to think the worst on that, is there? Is it the $700 billion now available to make sure the banks where we have put those savings don’t completely tank? Is it indigestion? The backwash of all that anger and bitterness resolving down to a fine haze of fear? Or just America saying “Drop dead” to the entire idea of investing in stocks, at least for the moment?

What is it? Can you tell me? I guess it’s more than an academic exercise. It is sort of starting to feel like the end of the beginning of the end and the start of a whole new cycle of pain, isn’t it.

Or is the bluebird of happiness right around the corner, just waiting to fly up our noses?

A few minutes ago, Congress passed the bailout, and the confused and psychotic market, which had been up for the day, started coming down. Right now it’s down 200 points from the day’s high.

Tell me if you can figure out this particular iteration of its dementia. I can’t. According to you guys, this bailout is being done exclusively to benefit all the morons, moneybags and slime-buckets who scuttle along on the bottom of our fiscal ecosystem. Now they get what is supposed to be their bailout and what happens? The market tanks.

Tell you what. Maybe we’ll all just agree from this point on in that the Street is not subject to rational understanding and leave it at that. I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t ever want to see another PowerPoint presentation on the subject of how the economy and the markets conform to certain rational metrics. Phooey.

It’s all a big crazy poker game, I think, and there are too many people at the table, without enough cards in the deck to go around, and those cards are marked, and the pot in the center of the table has a ton of markers in it instead of real cash, and most of the people who are playing are out of the minds, either drunk, or stoned, or just plain nuts. And there are no rules except those that are occasionally invoked by the house.

Most of the time, we don’t get a true look at the nature of this game. For the last couple of weeks, we actually have. Let’s not forget the lessons we’ve learned when the merchants of rationality once again raise their voices in harmonious chorus.

A couple of days ago, I was quite upset at what I perceived to be a wholesale disaster – the rejection of the bailout by a confused and vengeful House. A tsunami of comments poured in. Some of you agreed with me. A lot of you didn’t. This observation, from Steve in Charleston, West Virginia, was one of the most pointed and eloquent. “Sorry, Stanley,” he wrote, “but I’m not scared. Not even a little bit.” He went on:

Out here in the hinterlands where small business deals in cash rather than debt, local companies are not hurting. Banks are not folding. It’s harvest time and life is good. In fact, once the Schadenfreude at the demise of Wall Street has a chance to kick in, life couldn’t get much better.

There are quite a few of us out here who hate, loathe and despise everything that Wall Street has become, and we’re even less enthusiastic about Washington. The only politicians who apparently understand that are the ones who voted against the bailout. As far as we’re concerned, Wall Street can go to hell, and then maybe the rest of us can get to work on restoring this country to what it was before Wall Street slimed it.

There was much more of the same from a lot of people. Several things are clear from this. First, that many people’s hatred of the institutions that run our economy and our government is greater than their fear of societal collapse. Second, that public desire for vengeance at this time outstrips any empathy or concern they may have for the impact that this crisis may have on their fellow countrymen. Third, that a lot of folks believe that our economy can get along without the securities market and those who “manage” it. And that, finally, at this time in history, pretty much everybody has a solidified position on just about everything, and that any situations and facts that may intrude on their lives simply fortify their existing points of view.

So if you’re a Democrat, you feel the current crisis speaks to what the Republicans have done to us over the course of the last eight to thirty years. And if you’re a Republican, in spite of the fact that your party has been in power for a long time in all three branches of the Federal Government, you blame liberals, Democrats, oligarchs, and big-spending government hotshots for our dilemmas. If you believe that regulation is necessary to keep crooks and nitwits from running the show, you still believe that. If you think the “free markets” should operate, wherever those might be, you feel even more strongly that you are right.

So events do nothing to moderate or change anybody’s point of view. This is kind of depressing for all of us, I think. It’s hard when you see something dramatic happen and think “Aha!”… and then find that your adversaries are shaking the very same news in your face triumphantly and saying, “Oho!”

I, on the other hand, am a flexible fellow. I’ve been looking at my initial opinion and trying to decide where I was wrong. A lot of you are very persuasive.

See, I thought that a widespread panic leading to tens of thousands of job losses in the financial sector were bad for not just Wall Street, but the nation that has trillions of dollars invested there.

I thought that a banking system in free fall, draining the FDIC of all its resources and ultimately placing all our savings and checking accounts at risk, was detrimental to everybody, not just the fat cats who have screwed everything up.

I thought a limit on the executive compensation at firms applying for a bailout, and assistance for homeowners who might be forced to default on their mortgages, was good. I see a lot of you disagree. Many of you seem to have an image in your mind, when you hear the word “defaulting home owners,” of rapacious, greedy losers who never had any intention of paying off their mortgages. In fact, there’s just as much anger out there, it seems, against those people who got themselves in over their heads as there is against the aforementioned fat cats.

Anger, that’s the ticket. Everybody is very angry. Angry at Wall Street, of course. Who isn’t? Angry at banks and loan officers and those who took advantage of a system that recruited them as good credit risks when they weren’t. Angry at Bush. Angry at Paulson. Angry at Pelosi. Angry at Freddie and Fannie. Angry at the victims. Angry at the perps. 

They say anger can be cleansing. Maybe I should just relax and get with the program. In a couple of months, we can all wake up and see upon what beach this wave of ire has delivered us, and see how many innocent have been washed away with the guilty.

I just read a comment from a House Republican who helped to defeat the bailout. It said that passing the bailout would represent “a coffin on top of Ronald Reagan’s coffin.” In one statement, this guy made it clear what his camp’s priorities represent – ideology over the welfare of the public.

I’m having a tough time with the free-market guys, believing that they are serious. It was, after all, the free expression of the marketplace that enabled the creative types to engineer the downfall of our system. The fact is, total freedom in the vast economic system in which we live represents not liberty, but license.

Now, at a time when some form of assistance and central oversight is clearly necessary, the House stood up for… nothing. Let ‘er rip. Que sera sera. Whatever will be will most certainly be.

And now? I’m just scared. I’ve never been a gloom-and-doom sort, but in this one bold move we have been given a peek under the flap of the tent. And what is there is… nothing. Nobody is running the show. We are in free fall. But Ronald Reagan can sleep well.

That’s something to somebody, I guess. I hope, whoever they are, they feel good about it. Because I sure don’t. Do you?

A bailout that doesn’t sell out the American people. 

A return to some kind of sane discourse in the electoral process, which has been pushed relentlessly into the Rovian realm recently. 

A spirit of cordiality and calmness to descend on our nation and not disperse until it is replaced by a nice dose of holiday cheer. That’s a much better way to manage during a crisis than all this crazy yelling and waving of arms in the air. 

A recognition on the part of all advertisers that in order to sell their products and services they have to keep pumping out their messages to the public; and that if they do not their decline will represent a self-fulfilling prophesy on an unprecedented scale. 

No more bank failures. 

No gigantic parachutes for anybody whose financial institution was leveraged more than 20 to 1. 

A return to the days when a gain or loss of 100 points on the Dow was considered a big deal. The other day a financial type said to me, “Okay, 350 points down is not a GOOD thing, but it could be worse.” That scared me more than all the pessimistic crud I’ve waded through lately.

Any firm that has collapsed, defaulted, defalcated or otherwise demonstrated extreme stupidity is no longer allowed to disseminate the thoughts of a security analyst about the sagacity and competence of other companies. 

Warren Buffett gives everybody a couple of thousand bucks to spread around as they see fit. 

Are you listening, God? … Mr. Buffett?

If there’s one thing the Street hates, it’s uncertainty. Like most of my neurotic friends, its mood swings inappropriately high on the slightest whiff of good news, and zooms to depressing depths at the merest suspicion of impending bad karma. Given the paucity of the former and the plethora of the latter, it’s been a crazy ride lately, with trips to the moon closely followed by extended visits to the sewage system that runs beneath corporate capitalism on an all-to regular basis.

Like Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke, I would like to do whatever I can to help restore confidence and solidity to the marketplace. In support of that effort, I hereby offer a few thoughts on what, even at this challenging juncture, is not in any sort of doubt:

• An individual in danger of losing his or her mortgage will be worse off, in the end, than the majority of executives working in the institution holding that mortgage;
• While investment banks may change their stripes, investment bankers will not;
• The bailout will most dramatically benefit those who created the crisis in the first place;
• The new levels of oversight and regulation that are implemented will have the greatest impact on those firms which require it least;
• All the excesses and depredations foisted upon our poor economy will be back very soon, because it’s simply too boring to do business or make obscene amounts of money by playing things straight;
• An extremely small number of highly fungible executives will be punished for their actions; they will later emerge from prison to become philanthropists;
• An entire graduating class of pundits, senior managers, hedge fund speculators and debunked risk-management geniuses will be jettisoned from the body of the system; they will appear almost immediately in the financial media playing the part of experts who can explain whys, wherefores and potential future courses of action;
• Wall Street will survive;
• Main Street will suffer;
• The rich will probably have to wait a while to get richer;
• The poor need suffer under no such limitation to achieve their customary status.

When the Soviet Union fell, all the Eastern European countries had to reconstitute their governments. Former communist bureaucrats had to scramble, since the whole philosophical and operating infrastructure under which they had professionally and personally prospered had been yanked away. Today there are entirely new institutions governing those nations, and in many cases the same bureaucrats who prospered under the old regime are still running the game from new offices, with new titles, new letterhead, new committees to chair. I have no doubt as we transition our economy to a new more equity-based model, the former scions of the now-discredited system will once again rise to the apex of power under a brand new flag.

It’s not only cream that rises to the top.

Sure enough, everybody and his aunt Mary is lining up to take a piece of the bailout. I applaud their efforts. Why should only the fattest of the fat cats get the meat and potatoes? Yes, they need it more than most, because it’s hardest on the best fed when the supper plate is empty. But still. Fair is fair. 

I’m sure you have your own list. Here’s mine: 

I would like some help with my two mortgages. It was hard enough to sustain one, but this second one is sort of killing me. I can make it. But it won’t be easy. If we’re sweeping up a bunch of ill-considered obligations into the cooking pot, I’d like Uncle Sam to consider mine. They’re no more idiotic than many, and smarter than most. 

I’d like the lease on my car to be bought out, or at least reduced. At the time I selected the two-year option on that bright red, eight-cylinder, genuine leather interior turbo-charged Deutche monster, the $800 per month seemed achievable. I suppose it still is, but it’s darned inconvenient. I’d much rather it was lower, which would make it easier for me to pay off my other debts. Is it possible that those of us who have leased or purchased too much car for our wallet can be offered some assistance at this juncture? I know there’s spirited debate on who’s going to get what right now between Democrats and Republicans. Would one of the two parties, during this election year, like my vote? 

Then there’s my American Express bill. I’ll be hanged if I know how, but my balance has crept up to an amazing sum. More than $10,000! I suppose that paying the minimum for almost a year while living the dream may have something to do with it. Cameras. Computers. IPods. Vacations, now and then. Pretty soon you’ve got a whopping big nut to crack and eat. I’ll be honest with you, it scared me to look at it when I finally took a peek online last week. If I have to clear that debt, I’ll be cash poor for quite some time, unless I borrow more. That would be inadvisable, I think. 

It’s also my view, taken from a purely selfish perspective, which I don’t think is inappropriate given the circumstances, that credit card debt should in one form or another be included in this package. If it isn’t, think of the consequences! People would have to stop buying on time. Many, many honest, hardworking Americans just like me would perhaps default on their loans. The entire credit structure of our society, and the mercantile system upon which it is built, would falter! Do we want to risk that? 

There’s much more I could come up with if I really thought about it, I’m sure. So please, gentlemen. When you’re coming up with your list of those who receive the plums from this very large pie, don’t forget the working person. We were pretty stupid, too, you know.

It was fun to watch all the free market junkies zooming the Dow up 400 points on news that the Gubmint was about to put together a bailout of the financial markets. It will be equally amusing, in a taste-of-bile sort of way, to hear all the reasons why this particular mega-deal is a good idea while similar assistance to individual home-owners is way to socialistic, you know.

At this point, the world seems to be dividing itself into two traditional camps. Camp One is made up of people who want the pain to end as quickly as possible. They like bailouts because, well, if you were in a sinking rowboat, wouldn’t you bail? Most people would. What’s the alternative? Pray? While prayer plus bailing is often enough to save the vessel, bailing-free prayer is less effective.

Camp Two is interesting. It consists, again, of two kinds of people, at least. In Camp Two A, you will find those who have a philosophical problem with Gubmint. They don’t like it. They view any form of intervention as a violation of the precious free markets that are supposed to regulate themselves, in spite of ample evidence that they do not. In this group you will find the very rich who have money in a secure place and also a variety of people who aren’t sure there really needs to be a Federal Gubmint at all. Sarah Palin’s husband, for instance. The potential First Dude. He belonged to an organization that, as I understand it, entertained the idea of Alaska excusing itself from the Union. So there’s that.

Camp Two B is comprised of folks who just want to see the whole thing crash and burn. The system stinks. Let it all go to hell. Membership in segment A and B are not mutually exclusive. You can belong to both, in other words.

When Marx was in full flower in the middle of the 20th Century, there were two types of comrades then, too. Members of Type One wanted to organize unions, pass legislation, elect fellow-travelers, and otherwise work in their own way to change the system in ways to their liking to improve the lives of the People. Type Two was made up of grim-faced doctrinaires who believed that before things could get better under the great new State, they had to get worse. So they opposed all efforts to improve working conditions, raise wages and otherwise make people’s lives better in the short term. Fortunately for our side, both Types have now for the most part been relegated to the dust-bin of history. But the division between fixers and non-fixers is evocative, I think.

As for me, I’m for anything that will make the market go up 400 points in 90 minutes. Who knows. While they’re putting on all these Band-Aids, the patient might just stop bleeding for a while. And even if he doesn’t, we’re might have a lot less blood on the carpets when it’s all over. I think that would be nice.