Captain's Log

For those who have been living under a rock the past few days, there's this huge uproar over AIG paying out 165 million or so dollars to execs in bonuses... while at the same time they are receiving billions of dollars in "bailout" funds.

And now there's controversy. Seriously, what?

Did anybody NOT see this coming when the federal bailout was first getting mentioned? Did people honestly think that government and big business were going to sit down and use taxpayer money to restructure businesses and jumpstart the economy? How blissfully optimistic IS the populace of this country?

You have a bunch of selfish greedy old men who suddenly get billions of dollars as a reward for fucking things up. What do you think is going to happen?

And the thing is, this isn't the first time shit like this has happened. This isn't an isolated incident. Just about every failing business getting bailed out is paying millions of dollars to its execs and blowing more money on useless shit, whether it be $400 thousand dollar private retreats and hunting trips, or $50 million dollar luxury jets. When automaker CEO's flew to Congress to beg for bailout funds, they spent $20K to travel there and back in private jets. Bailout talk has gone back to last summer, but we're only flipping out now, towards the end of March?

And it's not just the fact that some of these "bailout" funds are being spent on insuring the cushy lifestyles of rich CEOs while the taxpayers footing the bill are struggling to keep their homes. It's the fact that these businesses were failing in the first place, and rather than letting them go, we're spending over a TRILLION dollars to keep them afloat for just a little big longer.

Inevitably it's all going to collapse. This country isn't going to be able to sustain it's skyrocketing debt ceiling forever. Failing businesses fail for a reason, and unless life support continues indefinitely, they're going to fail too. The only thing is now, everybody is being dragged down with them.

It doesn't help that this bailout is being done with money that, frankly, really doesn't exist. Or if it does, it's absolutely worthless. I mean, what is our dollar backed by, besides a federal government that is now 11 trillion "dollars" in debt. The only thing that makes the dollar worth something is that people say it's worth something.

And maybe this is a good thing. I keep talking about how we need total economic collapse in this country. That we need everything to fall apart so we can rebuild and reshape this country properly. And the guys in charge, who are trying to keep it from happening, are ironically going to make it happen even faster.