Not a Bailout, but $25 Billion for Oil Independence

But here's betting that direct loans to the domestic car companies will yield greater dividends to the American economy than the money being invested in our faltering mortgage and insurance institutions.

Car companies actually make things -- cars and trucks. Their enterprise encourages the development of future, saleable technology. Their success in that endeavor would ensure the continuation of an American-owned industrial base. That speaks to American manufacturing jobs and to all of the ancillary employment stemming from those jobs.

And there' s this:

We have nothing except vague promises and hope of the good that supposedly will transpire from the federal government's financial intervention in our troubled mortgage and insurance businesses. Maybe they will develop some kind of fiscal discipline. Maybe they won't. But it's a safe guess that, whatever happens with them, most of us will see precious little benefit.

But at least with the car companies, we have the promise of something tangible -- more fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly vehicles such as the plug-in electric Chevrolet Volt car that GM displayed last week at its 100th corporate birthday celebration.

The Volt and similar cars promise to revolutionize personal transportation, to make it less dependent on oil and all of the political, economic and social evils attached thereto.

That's worth $25 billion, I think. It's a better risk than betting that the investors and speculators who got us into our current financial trouble by buying and selling poorly vetted loans have our best economic interests at heart.