The Little Red Hen Adapted for the Age of Obama

The Obama Administration is giving the UAW and GM a blank check.

March 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration is “open minded” about giving General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC more aid and will use “all the resources” of the federal government to avoid bankruptcy for the automakers, said Steven Rattner, chief adviser to the U.S. Treasury’s autos task force.

This reminds me of the children's tale, The Little Red Hen with some modifications. Here's an excerpt of the way I would write it for today.

One day as the Little Red President was scratching in a field, he found an automaker who was going bankrupt because it paid too much money to build cars.

"This automaker should be saved," he said. "Who will pay for this bailout?"

"Not I," said 45% of the population who pay no taxes. "You're trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor!"

"Not I," said Big Pharma. "You've wiped out our profits by allowing foreign drugs into the market!"

"Not I," said the energy utilities. "We're struggling to build unprofitable renewable energy resources."

"Then I will," said Mr. Geithner. And he did it by issuing mountains of Treasuries that were bought by the Fed with money created out of thin air.

The completion of the story is left as an exercise for the reader.