Putting all that cash in perspective

With all the chatter in the media about Congress spending $500 Billion for this and $500 billion for that, we thought it worthwhile to put all that cash in perspective. I have held a few $20 bills in my hand, so I can imagine what a few hundred dollars would look like, or perhaps even one thousand dollars. But a million dollars? A billion dollars?

This is $10,000 in $100 bills.

Yes we know, it’s a thing of beauty. I considered using a stack of $20 bills, but it just didn’t resonate as well as the $100 bills. Besides which, for the demonstration that follows, this post would be 5 times as long.

This is $1 MILLION in $100 bills at the foot of say … one of the elected officials we sent to Washington DC. For perspective, this person is 6′ tall wearing size 12 sneakers (size is for comfort only). Any similarities that figure shares with Rod Blagojevich, the disgraced former governor of Illinois, is purely coincidental. Besides, Rod Blagojevich is only about 5′5″ and thus too short for this perspective.

That $1 million in $100 bills takes up about the same floor space as a pair of size 12 sneakers, so who in Washington DC is going to miss that?

This is $100 MILLION in $100 bills resting comfortably on a standard shipping pallet, sometimes also called a skid which, coincidently, is also a verb used informally to describe a downward path to ruin, poverty, or depravity.

The cube it forms is approximately 4 feet on all sides. It’s conceivable, however unlikely as it may be to you, that someone in Washington DC could actually NOT notice this amount of money missing. There are a lot of cube heads (a.k.a., block heads) in Congress “we the people” bless with the privilege of representing us so we are going out on a limb and say that even this amount of money may not be missed.

This is ONE BILLION DOLLARS in $100 bills resting comfortably on 10 standard shipping pallets or skids. At this point, the definition of the verb “skid” is beginning to resonate.

Even the block heads we send to Congress will admit that this is now “real money” and will need some help in moving it all about. If you are in Congress, needing help in moving anything about inevitably means some form of compromise or quid pro quo with some other Washington block head – a potentially very risky move, so it may be better to just punt. When you are elected to Congress, you punt a lot.

This is ONE TRILLION DOLLARS in $100 bills resting comfortably on 10,000 standard shipping pallets. The pallets are stacked two high.

The barely distinguishable tiny red spec on the bottom left of the image above is the same 6′ tall square head elected official with bad hair and size 12 sneakers he wears for comfort that we sent to Washington DC.

The current fiscal year ends on September 30th. Just nine months into this fiscal year, the federal deficit had topped ONE TRILLION DOLLARS – the first time that has happened. With one month to go, this year’s actual budget deficit, the net of outlays (spending) vs receipts (taxes) was 1.5 TRILLION DOLLARS – FOR LESS THAN ONE YEAR!

-Surface Earth columnist: CB

Filed under: Bailout, News, Thoughts , Bernanke, congress, Current Events, News, Obama, Politics, Thoughts, treasury

THE EXTORTION OF US TAX PAYERS (a.k.a., the Detroit Bailout)

Guest blogger a/k/a guest “poster” (CB), shares with us………….

THE EXTORTION OF US TAX PAYERS (a.k.a., the Detroit Bailout)

Let’s do the math and perhaps put it out to a poll. I’ll focus on GM, you can do the same for Ford and Chrysler. GM employs about 252,000 people globally. The company website totals its US work force at 97,624 across some 87 US zip codes.

The pitch made by the Big Three last week puts the GM term loan “request” at least $12 billion they said was needed to bridge a funding gap in their global operations through just 2009. Unless you think that by the end of 2009 mobs of Americans will be buying enough GM cars to make a difference, by this time next year these same three will be asking for more tax payer money. They will site then, as they do now, a vast US unemployment amongst a plethora of other dire consequences should they be “allowed” to fail.

Now here is the math: if we consider only the US based employees of GM, that “term loan” works out to over $122,920 per current employee – including the over two dozen lucky top earners at the company that make well over $1 million per year. If we were to poll those same US employees of GM, asking simply, should GM management be handed $12 Billion IN CASH or instead should each US based employee given a severance package that includes nearly $123,000 IN CASH and then seek employment at the several other US based (but foreign) car manufacturers who for some reason are NOT asking for a bailout. By the way, these other car companies will most assuredly be delighted to increase their own US car production output to make up for the void should the “big three” go under. Now back to the math, what would those tax paying US based employees choose? Would they trust $12 Billion in the hands of a few pigeon headed multi-millionaires that drove their company, an icon of American manufacturing competence and power the world over, into total obsolescence or would they take a chance on themselves with that $122,920?

Now that $122,920 may seem like a paltry amount for some, and certainly that is so for the GM CEO who earns over $10 MILLION IN ADDITION TO his annual salary of $1.5 million (source WSJ) that he is now willing to “sacrifice”, for one year, for the sake of getting this bailout…presumingly because its good for the nation. What a patriot. Take note however, he is offering to giving up just over one tenth of his total compensation and this “sacrifice” does not include his use of the company’s air force (yes, we talking about a car company), fleet of chauffeured cars, personnel/family allowances and that all important multi-million dollar corporate expense account amongst the plethora of other perks.

Do we really need to debate this?

Author:  C.B.

See also:

CNN:  auto plea passes the House

Filed under: Americans, Bailout, Politics, Taxpayer , Americans, CNN, Current Events, Detroit Bailout, Distress, Extortion, Give Back, Give Me a Break, Humanity, News, Politics, Taxpayer, think, Wall Street Journal