This is great. Gomory has created a fictional universe to explain our same never ending question of why the financial sector was thrown gobs of money and the auto industry is getting the shaft.

Autopia: A Tale of Two Bailouts

While America hits a record number for food stamps and the Auto industry goes beggin' and pleadin' to save their companies, AIG hands out massive executive bonuses and salaries!

Some executives in the group of 130 recipients will get more than $500,000 to stay through 2009, about 200 percent of their salaries.

The awards may equal 100 percent to 300 percent of an executive’s annual salary, and as much as 100 percent for the next round of payments for lower-paid employees, the person said. The retention payments are several times larger than year- end bonuses, which most of the 130 executives will still get in March, the person said.

Told one thing, get another or more aptly titled: What is Behind that TARP?

Paulson to Focus on Consumer Finance:

[Paulson] has shelved the original plan to buy troubled mortgage assets while turning his attention to nonbank financial institutions and consumer finance.

Purchasing these so-called "toxic" assets was once the cornerstone of the rescue plan for financial markets and was almost the entire focus of Congress when the package was being debated before its enactment. But almost as soon as Treasury received the money, it decided that giving capital to banks in return for preferred stock was a better use of the funds.