The King is dead....

While watching CNN last night, a news item flashed on the small bottom banner of the screen which said "UN pledge to give $2 billion in aid to developing countries" (okay I'm not really sure if it was the UN or some other organisation, I'll admit, but the point I'm trying to make follows).

A few days back, GM, Ford, and Chrysler's bailout plan was approved, albeit for a 'lesser' sum of $15 billion. Imagine that. 2 billion dollars for people who can't get three square meals a day, who are besieged with diseases and systems that have been enforced upon them (yes, democracy is not suited for all), and whose stories go untold, "under-reported" - take Sri Lanka for instance, where death tolls have exceeded those in Afghanistan this year, according to Time magazine; but hey, they didn't have trigger happy white boys running around with M60s now did they...

Thomas Friedman, in an article on the New York Times, called the bailout plan the equivalent of several things, my personal favourite being "...the equivalent of pouring money into CD players on the eve of the iPod's release..."

I don't see why they should bail-out the automakers. Granted, there will be massive layoffs and repercussions. But the big three knew that in business, there are risks. It's called capitalism, nimrods. You guys are the ones who espoused it a few decades back. If you can't give the customers what they want, of course they're going to buy someone else's stuff. That's where the hybrids come in, the electric cars, the cars whose emissions are the stuff of clean water. It may sound like science fiction, but then again, so did the Model-T back then.

I was of the mind that capitalism was dying out. (not that I really mind though) That bailouts are becoming the order of the day. But wait, they're now selling senator seats on the open market.

Whopp-tee-doo...