Eclectic Amateur

Let me see if I have this straight…

(1) Dubious financial minds come up with even more dubious [read: bullshit] derivative “securities” upon which transactions are based, and our Congressional masters sling the financial industry $700bn, no questions asked. In fact, the entire premise upon which the bailout was approved even gets changed in midstream, but no worries.

(2) Auto industry which employs hundreds of thousands (over a million if you kick in the cascade effects) and remains the largest part of the American manufacturing base asks for $25bn to get it through until new cost-saving labor agreements and reduced legacy costs kick in, and the answer is “Clear it with Countrywide Chris and Subprime Barney first.” Oh, and you boot John Dingell for the Mayor of Whoville in the process.

Yeah, we’re watching here in Michigan. Which reminds me, a word of advice for Senator Dick Shelby: I can’t recommend sticking your schnozz north of Toledo for the foreseeable future–you’ve become a household name on sports radio, of all things. And not remotely in a good way.

Other than the fact that I don’t listen to sports radio — my thoughts exactly.

John Michael Greer shares his impressions of Detroit:

I spent the flight staring out the window at half a continent’s worth of scenery while trying to fit my head around Bateson’s take on systems theory or the tangled syntax of some scrap of atrocious medieval Latin, and spent the ride from the airport to the hotel in suburban Auburn Hills taking in glimpses of Detroit: long-abandoned factory buildings in ruins, gritty slums with colorfully named churches and every third house boarded up, posh suburban neighborhoods with ostentatious yards, huge office buildings breaking the skyline, and then the huge mass of Chrysler’s headquarters complex looming up beside the freeway like a pharaoh’s tomb. I half-expected to see an inscription out of Shelley’s Ozymandias there:

My name is Iacocca, CEO of CEOs;
Look on my works, ye bankers, and despair!