>>Note: While this shows the auto companies "repaying" some of their funding, it should noted that they're repaying it with other loans. Kind of like paying off one credit card with another. ;)
>>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/business/02gret.html?_r=1
>>Yes we can! ;)
>
>Jake, you are such a curmudgeon ;-)
>
>You are right about the auto companies. Point taken. We think of them as the backbone of America, not the cause of the financial crisis. Actually when it comes to pigs at the trough they were far worse than the bankers, if that's possible.

IIRC only 2 of them this time around.
>
>We really do have a fundamental disagreement. (An amiable one, at least IMO). In my view untrammeled free enterprise is not a good thing. They will bend us over again and again, as long as they think they can get away with it. They are not necessarily evil. They are just incredibly greedy.

Pirates are also entrepreneural... Mostly a matter of definition on the "good" or "accepted" part.
And bureocracies also have an inbred impulse to grow and smother everything else.
I think the best thing the US founding fathers did was to focus on checks and balances -
knowing that each side has to be trimmed when it gets the upper hand for too long.

regards

thomas