“WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF GENTLEMEN, GENTLEMEN”

12/2/08

As I write this, the CEOs of the Big 3 automakers are reappearing before Congress asking for a taxpayer bailout. As those who follow the news will recall, these three first appeared a few weeks ago and were sent home with a homework assignment, i.e., concoct a plan for saving these American industrial bulwarks and leading them once again to prosperity. The plans from the various companies will probably include cuts in executive pay packages, elimination of brands, importing of fuel efficient vehicles, or vehicle designs, from foreign operations, improving the fuel efficiency and/or eco-friendliness of the fleet, further concessions from the UAW, etc. These plans should be interesting, as, of course, should be the outcome of the meeting. But that is not the point of this particular post.

While the Big 3 grovel and debase themselves before the self-styled doyens of all public endeavor who occupy Capitol Hill, Wall Street already has its oversized share of the public dole, all of which was garnered without so much as a hint of a “plan” to emerge from its self-inflicted near death experience. Wall Street has only had to complain of the financial equivalent of a bad case of the flu and our public servants, whose “campaign funds” have been generously larded with largesse from the free marketeers on Wall Street, have hopped to attention, shoveling your dollars into these poorly managed enigmae at a pace that reminds one of nothing so much as Flash Gordon and Dr. Zarkov shoveling coal into the furnaces that provided the energy to the beam that supported the city of the Hawkmen after our heroes were captured by the evil Prince Vultan.

So, courtesy of you, the taxpayer, the good times will continue to roll on Wall Street. Oh, they won’t roll for the shareholders of these Wall Street icons, or for the “ordinary” employees of these financial Hoover devices. However, for the actual “producers,” those financial savants who devised the schemes, and who sold and traded the progeny thereof, that brought these once venerable financial institutions, and the world financial system, to the foyer of Hades, will continue to receive pay packages which, though perhaps not at the completely inconceivable and unconscionable levels that once characterized the most overpaid industry in the long history of our planet, will still be at a level that the average person can only begin to imagine in the most ecstatic and fleeting of his dreams.

And so I have a modest proposal…

With the Big 3 looking for a bailout after Wall Street has already received what I suspect will only prove to be the first installment of its bailout, why not require those who have been saved on Wall Street to purchase their next round of toys from the Big 3?

For example, rather than let the CDS salesperson round out his West Coast fleet of Ferraris with another 430 Scuderia, require him to buy a new Corvette or Viper. Rather than let that denizen of Wall Street outfit her second Hamptons home with, say, a Lexus RX, require her to purchase, say, a Caddy SRX. Instead of letting the wunderkind CDO trader trade in his tired old 2008 S-Class on a 2009 S-Class, he ought to be made to purchase, say, a Caddy STS or Lincoln MKS. Make the new Wall Street CEO, fresh from his most recent gig in Washington, forgo the Bentley Arnage for the equally tasteful Chrysler 300C, or perhaps Cerberus can dust off those plans for a new Imperial to serve this newfound demand for mindless ostentation. And when the big time partner wants to give his daughter, say, a 335i for her 16th birthday, perhaps he should be required to purchase her a CTS. With all the money this new welfare class spends on motor vehicles, such a program should fix up the problems in Detroit in a proverbial jiffy.

Oh, yes, this will require sacrifice on the parts of those blameless Wall Street victims who clearly deserve a bailout after having had so many unfortunate, thoroughly unforeseen and, completely, of course, out of their control, events render them helpless victims of the worldwide financial crisis. But if those lazy, overpaid layabouts who work in the car factories that dot the Midwest are going to have to take massive pay cuts (Doubtless, given enough time and federal money, the mavens of the Street could probably prove that it is these blue collar no-accounts who got us into this trouble in the first place, but I digress. At least I do so parenthetically.), Wall Street must be made to make similarly painful sacrifices. It’s only fair.