The once in a while Rant

So occascionally I use this blog to vent and rant a little, this is one of those times. Last night the Government loan to the Auto Industry failed. We gave $700 billion to the banking system to stop a worlwide banking failure, no biggie right? The government had no problem saving one institution that screwed themselves over, but when the auto industry needs to be saved, just wait one minute there what about the little businesses they ask? Yes the auto industry needs to be updated and needs to be more competitive. Last year both Toyota and GM sold the same amount of cars about 9 million cars each, GM did it at a $38.7 billion loss, Toyota $17.1 billion dollar profit. That is not competition that is a total ass kicking, they are dead even in sales yet have no chance at competition. P.S. Cerberus/Chrysler if you want govt. money make your books public, don't tell me you're broke without proving it.

But this is not the point of the rant, the $15 billion dollar loan is denied, ok, but what the hell is the Fed doing loaning $2 trillion dollars to unnamed institutions. Where the hell is Congress to go wait a minute on that shit. From Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

So we can't save a large industry, unless you are a bank, then you can say you are just too big to fail and we go Well OK, now where are the rabbits Lenny, I want to play with the rabbits. But if you are not a bank we ask questions, and think of our constituents. Hell they let American Express recategorize themselves as a bank, to get money from the bailout, and have put the paperwork to recategorize yourself as a bank online. So GM become a Bank, get the bailout money, hell we all know the government will never get a dime back from that. Read the Bloomberg story here.

Me, I'm going back to thinking about how a few years ago, in business school going over the whole but the credit derivatives can't be covered what happens if the economy gets like totally f*cked? Don't worry that won't happen! HA! I remember all those offers to work for the risk arbitrage department, nice that would have been fun. I could only imagine looking at the screen and hearing crying/screaming when all the cards fell. Hell if we could see it in school, why did no one in the banking institution see this coming? Oh wait they did, but if you brought it up at an interview, that's where it ended and they wanted nothing to do with you. So Congratulations to the few who had enough money to actually make a killing by forseeing what would happen, and becoming rich off the stupidity of your colleagues.