Monday Bailout Roundup: Can-Kicking Edition!

Why would this week's roundup be called the "Can-Kicking Edition?" Because after Congress didn't pass an auto bailout, the White House went and bailed them out from the $700 billion package. The $17.4 billion bailout the autos received should be just enough to tide them over until early next year when they will again be on the brink of collapse and we'll get to do this whole dance over again! Yay for $17.4 billion worth of can-kicking!

After all these bailouts, do you ever feel like this guy?...

Now, on to the best bailout blogging content from last week, starting with discussion of the auto bailout...

• Let's start this party off with some hilarious cartoon blogging, courtesy of Michelle Malkin.
• Paul Ingrassia has a good article on Bush "blinking" in auto bailout negotiations.
• Don Boudreaux writes a characteristically fabulous article on bankruptcy and the autos.
• And another article, this time from Todd Zywicki in the Wall Street Journal, echoes Boudreaux.
• Megan McArdle traces the problem back 50 years.
• Meanwhile, Toyota continues to function like a business should, cutting costs and restructuring in difficult times.

And of course, the best financial discussion...

• And we might as well also start this party off with some cartoon blogging, this time from our own GovernmentBytes.
• HotAir points us to a great video explaining the mess that is TARP and oversight.
• Good news! Banks refuse to talk about how they're spending their taxpayer dollars.
• More good news! $1.6 billion of our dollars went to executive compensation and bonuses.
• The other big news last week was the Federal Reserve essentially lowering interest rates to zero, which Bob McTeer discusses at Forbes.
• Heritage comes full-circle and now releases a call to end the TARP program.
• The folks at National Review seem to have done the same, adding another to the list of people I wish had been with us in the first place.
• Greg Mankiw provides us with some terrific numbers/graphs showing the exponential growth of government during crises.
• The Competitive Enterprise Institute's John Berlau explores the nomination of Timothy Geithner in the DC Examiner.
• Hilarious: Credit Suisse is paying some executives with crappy mortgage-backed securities.
• John Tamny lays out the truth about Bush's economic policy, and it ain't pretty for fiscal conservatives.
• The DC Examiner points out grim reality: the Federal Government is itself the most over-leveraged institution on Earth.
• Calculated Risk shows us a disturbing graph: the Federal Reserve's balance sheet.
• Guess who else wants a bailout? The ethanol industry! The same industry that only exists because of 30 years of subsidies and favors from government. Here's the National Taxpayers Union's response.

And it wouldn't be a Monday roundup if it didn't have a special section for content from BailoutSleuth, one of the best blogs around on the issue...

• The Sleuth updates us on their Freedom of Information requests. Hint: the feds aren't budging.
• Meanwhile, another $643 million flew out the door.
• More contracts for servicing bailout aid, and zero more details about the nature or cost of those services.
• In a rare move, five banks are approved for aid, but one says no.
• Now Fox Business has joined Bloomberg in suing the feds, this time the Treasury regarding bailouts of AIG, Citi, and others.
• After the auto bailout, TARP is all out of money.