.iTown Staff

First, the Wall Street firms get several hundred billions in federal funds to rescue them from their collective greed.  The emergency funding was intended to add liquidity to the credit markets - funds that were intended to get lending institutions lending again - with the only problem so far being...they haven't.  The funds are being used to cover the executive's behinds,

Then, Citigroup suggests they need money to protect their company and their rich executives from their bad decisions and bad business practices, and came up with a number - oh, let's say $30 billion, to make it all go away.   A government bailout was only a phone call away.

Now, most recently, as illustrated by the two articles that can be accessed below, Bernie Madoff (what an ironic name!) made off with $50 Billion in primarily wealthy investors money in a multi-year Ponzi scheme.  The rich investors who tried to get richer in what should have been a "to good to be true" investment opportunity get stuck holding the (empty) bag, right?  Heck no!  As detailed in the second article, a judge has ruled that, you guessed it, the investors duped by Madoff will be protected by taxpayer money, to the tune of $50 Billion and perhaps much more.

So all of this begs the question: In an economic environment largely created by Wall Street greed, government incompetence, and an understandable resulting lack of consume confidence, why do the car companies need to to continually beg for assistance, or worse, why are some Senators able to use the exercise to reward their own states foreign auto industry - and punish a union that has membership that typically does not support their party? 

And we're supposed to maintain our faith in government?

Here's an article that provides an idea of how people were duped by the Madoff scheme.

Here's an article that describes a judge's ruling that the government should come to their rescue.