Tom Friedman, pessimism and socialism

The economic news is almost too awful to take lately, but I do want to take in the political news. President Obama and his Democratic adminstration must be the fresh air in our sails and I want to see it coming. This causes a problem for me because the economic and political news are inextricable these days. So I'm in a bit of a quandry. I must have some light of optimism to drag myself out of the bed every day and continue my job hunt, but optimism is getting harder and harder to find in the press.

Yesterday I watched a bit of the "Meet the Press" roundtable. One of my least favorite windbags was on the show, Tom Friedman. Any good roundtable must have at least one obnoxious windbag, but in this case all the other presumably knowedgeable people were agreeing with Friedman. And these days Tom Friedman is a very eloquent, impassioned advocate for unrestrained pessimism.

The main subject of the week is the bailout of the US automakers. The Republican leadership in the Senate wants to let the market forces do their magic and keep gubment hands out of the mess. The moderate left wants to throw more Treasury funds into the black hole of corporate shortsightedness that has created the losses. I think the US automakers should be socialized. I'm talking full government ownership of the all three corporations. Buy out the stockholders (for pennies on the dollar), kick some Union ass in very hardball negotiations, and manage the industry toward fuel-efficient production pronto. These corporations are political entities, so full-blown socialism is very close to what they are at the moment.