Bailout bonanza part II

On Thursday I explained to you how the bailout is an excellent tool that the government can use to help downtrodden victims of tragic events such as investment bank CEOs.  So it looks like the $700 billion Wall Street bailout is going to happen now that both the House and Senate have passed it.  It will only be a matter of time before we're bailing out airlines, oil companies, healthcare providers, and gamblers in Las Vegas.  But why stop there?  There are so many more problems in this country that can easily be solved with a few hundred billion dollars!  Here are a few other bailout ideas that the government absolutely MUST consider to make things right for victims of other major crises:

The prisoners' bailout

Criminals are a demographic group that has been mistreated by the U.S. government throughout our nation's history.  Instead of allowing them the freedoms afforded to the rest of American citizens, we keep them locked up in cells all day, being forced to make license plates and play on terrible football teams with Adam Sandler as their quarterback and Burt Reynolds as their coach.  How can we make it up to them?  Bail them out - literally!  The government should post bail money for every criminal, from Winona Ryder to Charles Manson.  Then, to give them a good start in their new life of freedom, give each of them $10,000.  If after a few years many of them end up in jail once again, another bailout may be needed.

The Jared Fogle bailout

Obesity has become an increasingly serious problem in America.  How do you conquer obesity?  Well, exercise is obviously out of the question, because 1) nobody can afford gym memberships with the economy as bad as it is, 2) global warming has made outdoor exercise unbearable, and 3) there are so many good TV shows on these days, leaving no time for exercise.  The one factor that is within our control is how we eat.  As our beloved Jared Fogle showed us, you can lose a lot of weight just by eating at Subway for every meal.  So why not bail out everyone in America with a BMI (body mass index) over 30 (the cutoff for obesity) by giving each of them $10 a day to use on Subway subs?  Let's just hope they don't use that money to wolf down footlong Chicken Bacon Ranch subs with cheese, which weigh in at 1280 calories and 70 grams of fat apiece.  But why would they - they want to lose weight, don't they?  There's no way obese people would ever choose to eat something so unhealthy!

The smugglers' bailout

Every year, drug smugglers lose many millions of dollars worth of product due to crackdowns by U.S. government officials.  These huge losses have put many a smuggler's business and livelihood in peril, and the drug smuggling community has become increasingly agitated by these government seizures.  How can we make it up to them?  Bail them out, of course!  Whenever smugglers are caught before delivering a shipment, compensate them for this inconvenience with a $1,000,000 check!  Remember to suggest to the smugglers that they should use the money to stimulate the U.S. economy, rather than to buy better smuggling boats or more drugs.  Can we trust them to actually do this?  Well, we trusted Wall Street, didn't we?

The bailout bailout

Despite the fact that the government supports it, a lot of (extremely unpatriotic) Americans are outraged about the bailout.  How can the politicians appease them?  Bail them out, of course!  Allow any American citizen who did not support the bailout to send an official statement of their position to Washington, and then send each of them a $5,000 check.  Of course there will be people out there who supported the original bailout and are angry about the bailout bailout, but then they can be bailed out in a bailout bailout bailout.  

The buffalo bailout

In the late 19th century, millions of buffalo were killed by hunters across the American plains.  Yet 100 years later, the government has done next to nothing to make amends for this atrocious act.  But what can the government do?  Money obviously has little use to a buffalo, but money does have considerable use to buffalo activists.  Therefore I propose the government should give $10 million to anyone who publicly supports buffalo, specifically buffalo conservationists and anyone who writes a blog having to do with buffalo.  Like the economic bailout, this is an urgent matter and must be done immediately as there is no time to think about it or consider the alternatives (there are none anyway).  So George, if you're listening, I would like my bailout money in a suitcase of unmarked $100 bills, and if you could deliver that by next Wednesday or so, that would be great.

Bailout bonanza part I

Well, I'm back.  I'm sure many of you thought (or hoped) that I was lost forever to a Vermont hippie commune, sitting around a campfire and singing "Kumbaya" with a bunch of scraggly long-haired shower dodgers.  Or maybe you thought I was actually a major investment bank in disguise as a blogger and had gone the way of Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch.  Well the truth is that I occasionally have to deal with this minor annoyance called a day job, and let's just say that if things went sour I wouldn't be the last person they'd show to the door.  Anyway, I'm back and ready to start bloggin' it up once again.

So, in case you haven't been following the news, the U.S. economy is in shambles!  Americans in all walks of life are beginning to suffer, but none are suffering more than the honest, well-meaning bankers and traders on Wall Street.  I would like to share with you a few examples of the horrors they have had to face.  WARNING: What you are about to read is extremely disturbing and may not be suitable for small children.  Here are a few of the more heartbreaking cases:

• 
  The investment banking managing director who, thanks to a meager $2 million bonus instead of last year's $15 million, has to survive in the dirty squalor of a house with only 3 butlers instead of 5.
  
• The hedge fund manager who is struggling to make ends meet and had to go as far as to sell his private jet just to afford the mortgage payments for his 8th home.
• The bank CEO who recently lost his job and was thrown out on the street with a mere $40 million and is now scraping by to survive.
• The head of mortgage-backed securities at a major bank who now has to suffer through the heartbreaking indignity of having to fill his Olympic-sized swimming pool with $100 bills rather than gold doubloons worth over $1000 each.

The humanity!  Fortunately for these poor, dejected souls, there is a ray of hope: a $700 billion government bailout.  If it works, this could put the beluga caviar back on their plates and the doubloons back in their swimming pools.  Unfortunately the bailout failed on its first vote in the House, but most people expect that a slightly modified bill will be passed within the next month.  Well, when you recklessly gamble and lose, it's nice to know that the government, led by Henry Paulson (or "Saint Henry" after he heroically rescues the American people) will gladly repay your debts.  Speaking of which, I lost $50,000 on the roulette wheel when I was drunk at the Mirage last weekend - remind me to call ol' Henry and have him cut me a check for that.

You see, the U.S. government has access to an endless supply of money that it can whip out at any time to do whatever it pleases.  If you succeed in getting the politicians in Washington to feel sorry enough for you, you will be rewarded with a huge check.  But you'd better have a pretty damned sad story (see those above).  Do NOT go crying to Uncle Sam with something lame such as, "I'm a recently widowed mother of 4 who has been working two jobs since the death of my husband 6 months ago just to make ends meet.  Now I can't pay the mortgage for my family's home since the rate has jumped from 7% to 20% and my home's value has been cut in half.  Please help!"  If you whine about a mild inconvenience such as this rather than a real problem, the government will not only ignore your request, but will take actions to spite you, such as giving the CEO of the bank that will soon own your about-to-be-foreclosed house a $1 billion check, no questions asked.

Where does this money come from, you may ask?  Well, there are 3 major cash cows that the government can milk until the cows come home (sorry about all the cow references):

1) Taxpayers

A sucker is born every minute, and these suckers are known to the government as "taxpayers."  There are approximately 140 million of them in the country.  The best thing is, they're usually so caught up in party bickering that they won't even notice if you stick your hand in their respective cookie jars and pull out $5,000 or so from each (on average).   They'll be too busy having arguments like:

"Bush ruined the economy!"

"No, Clinton ruined the economy!"

or

"Palin's daughter is a slut.  Like mother like daughter!"

"Well 'Obama' sounds like 'Osama.'  That proves he supports terrorists!"

or

"I heard Obama once snorted coke off the buttcheeks of a transgendered prostitute!"

"Oh yeah, well I heard McCain once clubbed a whole bunch of baby chipmunks to death!"

These people will NEVER notice the missing cash!

2) The national debt

Why even bother robbing the general public when you can just borrow money and never pay it back?  Right now, the U.S. government is over $10 trillion in debt and couldn't give a rat's ass!  Who cares if we owe China $1 trillion and they want us to pay it back?  George W. Bush can just walk up to Hu Jintao, slap him across the face, and say something like, "You ain't getting it back, because we're America!  Woohoo!  Deal with it, bitch!"

3) The money printing machine

Finding some cash to throw around is never a problem when you're the one that prints it!  Want to give your Wall Street buddies some money to cover their losses on Bear Stearns stock?  Just print out $100 billion and give it to them!  Want to fund a war in Iraq?  Fire that thing up and print out $1 trillion!  Want to cover the entire outer surface of the White House in high-quality diamonds?  Print out $10 trillion and "git 'er dun!"  It's that easy!

So bring on the bailouts!  What's the worst that could happen?