Barry O in Bail Mode: The Road to Zimbabwe?

In a speech on the economy during the recently completed campaign, Barack Obama cogently observed, “George Bush has dug a deep hole for us. It’s gonna take a while for us to dig our way out.”

Embarrassed silence.

No need at this point to repeat the now familiar aphorism that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

Unfortunately, Barry O is already picking up the shovel.

The Prezelect reportedly told 60 Minutes that his top priorities would include helping out the auto industry and homeowners.

“For the auto industry to completely collapse would be a disaster in this kind of environment, not just for individual families but the repercussions across the economy would be dire. So it’s my belief that we need to provide assistance to the auto industry. But I think that it can’t be a blank check.”

He said he favored an assistance package that would require the industry to remake itself so that it’s in a “sustainable” position for the future. “So that we are creating a bridge loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere.”

“We’ve gotta set up a negotiation between banks and borrowers so that people can stay in their homes,” Obama told Kroft. “… One thing I’m determined is that if we don’t have a clear focused program for homeowners by the time I take office, we will after I take office.”

The public appears split on whether a bailout of the Incredible Shrinking Three is a good idea — recent Hart and Rasmussen polls seem to go both ways on the matter. But the Rasmussen poll does indicate that nearly three-quarters of the public is worried that the government will eventually run out of money if it keeps doling out cash like an ATM on hyperdrive.

The problem is that the government never “runs out of money.” It can print all it wants. It just keeps cheapening it.

Wanna see what happens when a government turns on the printing presses to meddle in the economy? Take a gander at Zimbabwe, where inflation rate has been estimated to be in the range of 516 quintillion percent (yes, you read that right). The Right Honorable Bobby Mugabe began debasing his currency to finance land “reforms” (read: confiscation) at the turn of the century and has been steadily churning out “cash” … now largely useless pieces of script with more zeros than the Cleveland Indians batting lineup …. ever since to buy support for his vicious and despotic regime.

Those of us who lived through the 70s remember what even inflation in the low double digits will do to an economy: how it destroys savings, drives citizens to consume and hoard now rather than wait for price increases and decimates hope in the future.

The “change we need” is not “Carter quarters” — the derisive name for the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin released during the peanut farmer’s administration that was roughly the size of a 25-cent piece– and bought what the quarter would have a few years earlier.

It’s time to stop digging before our currency goes down a rathole.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is weighing in again on the bailout as well, calling on Republicans to “draw a line in the sand” as the road to GOP redemption. Couldn’t agree more.

And Ed Morrisey wonders, along with Gov. Mark Sanford, “how an institution with at least $10 trillion in debt can suddenly afford to start writing checks with twelve digits to the left of a decimal point.”

Tags: bailout, Barack Obama, Economy, inflation