PorkBelliesAllRound

At last Congress has voted yes to the rescue package commonly known as the American financial bail out plan. This will mean that a financial rescue package with a potential cost of $800,000,000,000 (yes that’s what $8 hundred billion looks like written numerically) will now be launched to rescue the much tarnished and heavily damaged United States economy.

What makes the passing of this legislation mystifying for a British person like myself is the garnish of pork belly legislation festooned around it. Originally, when this package failed to pass into law it was just a couple of pages long and pure at heart, aimed at rescuing the economy. Now it is several hundred pages longer and is full of all that’s wrong with the American system of democracy. It reminds me of Rome when it was in decline, not long before the fall.

In the middle of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, the U.S. Senate dispensed the pork shamelessly. This means that the senators packed the bill with a huge amount of wasteful, shameful goodies to please favored local groups and win support from opponents in today's House vote.

The American government is now going to buy toxic debts from that country’s financial institutions. These are debts that have diminished, or perhaps no remaining value. This plan is iniquitous, as these financial institutions should suffer some consequences for their foolish, or greedy or downright criminal actions. But instead they are about to escape their deserved fate as if they were each a corporate Houdini, minus the talent.

Here are some examples of what pork belly legislation looks like; Section 305 of the 450-page bill, "Modifications of Energy Efficient Appliance Credit." It runs to several pages long and contains separate sections for "dishwashers," "clothes washers" and "refrigerators."

The bill says manufacturers of energy-efficient appliances will qualify for up to $250 in federal tax credits for each machine they produce over the next three years. Total cost to taxpayers: $322 million over 10 years.

Just In case your own refrigerator is not working, please note the bill says nothing about passing any savings on to the consumer.

There are two separate tax breaks for film companies that produce movies in the U.S. that will cost the hard-pressed American taxpayer almost $500 million.

There is an extension of tax rebates to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands on rum duties costing $192 million over 10 years.

Alaskan fishermen who had been victims of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster will benefit by another $239 million, which is clearly aimed at winning the vote of U.S. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who; last week voted against the bailout package.

You can't make this stuff up although to be fair, there are several provisions of the bill that will undoubtedly help millions of people.

But the key problem, that this package does not solve, is that this fix only partially addresses some of the problems of the recent past, it does not address ongoing difficulties within the economy that are still coming downstream. It was essential that this measure was adopted, but it does not mean the problems are over. This is just the end of the beginning.