This blog focuses on the concerns of hard-working ordinary people creating new companies and new ideas. They want to sell these products and services globally, but let’s face it, prosperity begins at home. Sometimes it’s hard to get up in the morning to face such injustice in the morning paper: The tarring and feathering of automakers, auto companies, and auto workers by Washington — while Wall Street fat cat insiders and their rockstar derivatives traders walk off with their pockets stuffed with our money, and post haughty defenses of their multi-million-dollar bonuses, like Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products. People around here are taking 10 percent pay cuts and losing their jobs because of people like you: get over yourself. Frank James of the Tribune’s Washington bureau was one of the first to post the obvious question: Why no GM Treatment for Wall Street?

What’s good for the goose, is apparently not good for the Michigander.
Apparently the Administration believes that this may be the only course to save the auto industry over the long run, but is the cost worth it? The message being sent here is very dangerous: if you are down in the trenches trying to create long-term productivity, you are last on the list of Washington priorities. But, according to the Wall Street Journal, if you are Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit, taking hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars because of dodgy financial practices, you are incapable of being replaced:

Citigroup Inc., by contrast, has received three government rescues since October, under which the U.S. will own up to 36% of the company’s stock. Officials have in the past considered removing CEO Vikram Pandit, but demurred, in part because of the paucity of candidates to replace him, people familiar with the matter say. A spokesman for Citigroup couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.