But now comes an AP story this week, "Chrysler's fate running on empty: Car analysts expect it to die." The piece quoted Chrysler's chief financial officer saying the company needs " ... $7 billion every 45 days to pay parts suppliers." The article went on to note that "... analysts question whether the company's meager sales are generating enough cash to make those payments."

That's funny, because just days earlier, when Nardelli won his bailout prize from the White House he said, "This initial loan will allow the company to continue orderly restructuring while pursuing our vision to build (vehicles) ... people want to buy." Now that hardly seemed like a warning to the public that funded this "loan" that it was likely just throwing good money after bad toward a hopeless situation.

So we've been conned by the recognized con artists like Madoff; by the financial institutions who haven't done anything to help the rest of the nation with the bailout funds; and now by a carmaker that may have known darn well it couldn't survive, and yet took our money without letting us see what is being done with it.

Do these people not realize that we're talking about real money? Obviously not. Instead, they've collectively been coddled and treated as special breeds, instead of like the financial curs they are.

We've been scammed. Our national treasury has been looted. Our justice system has been exposed as a joke. And the trail of tears -- financial and personal losses -- just gets longer and wetter.

I supported the idea of the first bailout of financial institutions. Not because I trusted them, but because I knew another week's worth of panic would have left them with no stock value, and thus no capital. The result would have been a decimation of our economy.

But everything about the way we have dealt with these "untouchable" people and institutions -- letting Madoff carry on as usual, letting banks hoard the gifted cash and letting Chrysler fudge the facts -- makes me sick. I hope we can get every last one of these rotten scoundrels.