Well-Run Businesses Not Welcome Here

This topic might be rehashed over and over again, but I hear this point made too rarely in the discussions of where bailout money should be levied. It seems like the argument begins after the first decision. It is a classic argument gambit. Make the first question: "Where should we spend this bailout money?" and people start arguing over that--forgetting that that obfuscates the first question: Should we spend money on bailouts?

The whole premise of bailouts is a business exists that is too integral to the country's infrastructure or the foundation of the economic landscape to fail. How in the world does this not fall underneath the anti-trust segment of the United States' Statutory Law? The point of free-market capitalism is that well-run companies take over for badly run companies because badly run companies eventually fail! It takes some time and some pain, but just because a company was well run in the past and achieved a position of great prominence does not mean it will be well run in the future. There is a reason they have failed to the point of needing a bailout.

Bailouts only prolong pain and suffering of everyone involved in the economy. They also hold back businesses that are well run and would be at the forefront of re-building the economy from the economic ruin these badly run companies have thrust us into and champion bastions of the old guard that have failed and are dragging the rest of the economy down with them. Shed them and stop giving them money for a job poorly done. Start funding companies that have the potential to save the economy, not butcher it further.

If you need better proof than philosophical musings that bailouts are a bad idea...here is one example you can't explain away, no matter how you try: John Thain.
Merrill Lynch ex-CEO and all-around Asshole uses 1.22 Million dollars in early 2008 to do what? Decorate his office. For a full breakdown of those expenditures, please click here:

Office Renovation

And then after that piece of arrogance, he has the gall to spend $4 Billion of public bailout funds in Employee bonuses and then spits bile to defend that decision with the words "If you do not pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise" Hmm. Let's pay the people who destroyed our franchise to destroy it some more. How does this logic work when your company failed?

Bailouts are a perfect idea, let's give more money to people who have spent money in such an unwise manner that they need more money to waste. Perfect.