I realize I will never quite get my brain around the financial crisis, but hell!  Who are these idiots who stepped up to make the most important sales pitch in American history?  First they let the situation get so bad we’re ready to crash and then they reassure us with—what?  Some banker telling us that we needed a “Wall Street bail out” for “$700 billion.”  That was the best they could do?  They expected us to buy that?

As an old ad guy, I’m amazed.  You NEVER sell the negatives.  You concentrate on the positives.  You certainly don’t put things in their most unpleasant terms and then expect people to buy.  It’s like selling Gatorade by reminding everyone that the empty bottle will sit in a landfill for a thousand years.  Please!  We’re trying to convince people here!

Let’s back up and try it again.  In the first place, is it simply a “Wall Street bail out”?  Actually, it’s a plan to rescue all of us and not a bail out at all.  The simple fact is, we’re all tied to the stock market.  If you have a retirement plan, a 401K or anything else that helps you save for old age, you’re in the market.  Beyond that, we’re all learning now that modern economies run on regular credit, which is already drying up.  Student loan checks are bouncing as banks fail and soon even more problems will hit Main Street.  The Treasury Secretary knows this.  So do the people in Congress selling the pill.  Why couldn’t they put it in terms we could appreciate?  I mean, it’s one thing to rescue a few greedy bankers, but quite another to rescue our retirement savings.  Sell us the real goods.  We’re not saving them, we’re saving us. 

Second, it’s not a bail out.  It’s a rescue.  Why?  Because a) it sounds better and b) it’s more accurate.  Remember, we’re selling here.  Let’s act like it.  Let’s make the customer want to buy. 

Last, but far from least is the number.  It is not going to cost us $700 billion.  Sure, some of the money will be chasing after worthless paper, but the vast majority will be committed to buying up mortgages and stocks with genuine value.  I don’t hold out any hope that we’ll actually make a profit on this plan, but the downside shouldn’t be more than a couple of hundred billion.  It’ll cost roughly the same as a couple of years in Iraq.  Hell, we’ve done that already!

In the process we witnessed something truly ugly.  We watched a law being made.  The idea started as a 3 page document.  After some review, it grew to 42 pages.  By the time the House voted it down, it was over a hundred.  The Senate got their hands on it and now the bill is 451 pages and includes a breathtaking array of “sweeteners” including my personal favorite, $6 million to make wooden arrows.  Oh yeah, and now it costs over $800 billion.  The worst news is, ALL laws are made like that.  They start with a good idea and once all the smart people weigh in, no one could possibly like it and yet they all coo over it like an ugly baby.       

I wonder if we’d been able to save a thousand points in the Dow if we’d been sold a better bill of goods and acted sooner.  I wonder if things would have been different if we’d had a President who stepped out sooner to console us and convince us.  Oh, that's right....