Government bureaucracy

From Ross R., a reader of Doug Casey's newsletter:

Does anybody remember the reason given for the establishment of the Department of Energy.... during the Carter Administration? Anybody? No?

Didn't think so! Ready??
It was very simple... and at the time, everybody thought it very appropriate.
The Department of Energy was instituted on 8-04-1977… to lessen our dependence on foreign oil.
Hey, pretty efficient, huh???
And now it’s 2009 – 32 years later – and the budget for this “necessary” department is at $24.2 billion a year. They have 16,000 federal employees and approximately 100,000 contract employees. And look at the job they have done!
Good ole bureaucracy.
And now we are going to turn the banking system, healthcare, and the auto industry over to the same government?

GM bankruptcy tomorrow

In the "It's BFT" ('Bout Friggen' Time) category, GM is expected to file for bankruptcy tomorrow. I predicted their demise 2 years ago, as GM has the awesome track record of losing money 22 out of the last 23 years, incurring debt of more than $82 billion in the process. They have been technically insolvent for years, and bankruptcy was the ONLY option, despite misguided attempts by our government to bail GM out. Billions of dollars down the drain later, our government has finally come to the only conclusion they should have come to months ago. Prior to filing for bankruptcy, thousands have been laid off, dealerships closed, and vendors also going under. An earlier bankruptcy would have not only saved billions of lost taxpayer dollars, but would have reduced the blow of restructuring.

Of course, special interest groups (i.e. the UAW) opposed bankruptcy the whole way. As unpleasant as Chapter 11 is, believe it or not, this is the best thing for GM and US taxpayers. Hopefully, GM's remaining assets will be sold off and the US auto industry can reset and recover in a meaningful way, less burdened by GM's astronomical legacy costs. Capitalism works--we just have to get out of its way and let it sort itself out.