Looking for something to be thankful for? How about the fact that you are not too big to fail?

There are advantages to not being rich, or all that important. The rules don’t bend for you. That means you have a good chance of keeping your dignity, maintaining your self-responsibility. You may end up broke, but you can at least maintain your sense of place in the universe.

Pity, then, all the insiders. “Too big to fail” or “too important to go bust” means always having to say they’re sorry, but never actually being sorry. Because they’ve been bailed out.

Some day cultural historians are going to look back on this time, and judge the actual effects (as opposed to the predicted effects, by folks like me) of the Too Big To Fail doctrine. What will it do to all those egalitarians who line up so regularly to vote Democratic? They have such faith in “everybody’s equal” (or “should be made so”), but their politicians keep proving that some people are more equal than others.

And they do it every time.

The Olde Guarde Republicans, those Main Street folks who vote for the Wall Street bankers and wheelers and dealers . . . well, they’ve always believed that some people are more important than others. They support their brand of corruption (as opposed to the Democrats’) simply to maintain that fantasied order, their vision of the Great Chain of Being that places their ilk ineluctably on top.

But until future historians make up their mind about the Era of Bailouts, what can we say?

Well, perhaps The Carpenters put it best: “We’ve only just begun.”

Seeing an opportunity for “free money,” a number of bit players in the current crisis have horned in on the action. Shall we call it “No Nabob Left Behind”? Once you open the floodgates, why not let the states of New York and New Jersey, for example, get “special treatment”?

And then, just when you thought it could not get any more absurd, enter the Big Three automakers.

Hey: if the federal government is handing out money to banks, why not hand out money to failing auto companies?

I could list a long series of reasons. But consider, instead, the sage words of one congressional skeptic, Rep. Jeff Flake:

My own view is that, if there was ever an industry in need of bankruptcy, it’s the auto industry. It’s the only way they can renegotiate their union contracts and make other changes to be competitive. They might not make it out of bankruptcy, but they certainly can’t survive long term on their own without entering it.

Bracing words. Repeat them: “If there was ever an industry in need of bankruptcy, it’s the auto industry.”

I wish I’d said this myself. “In need of bankruptcy” is not exactly our current era’s marching cry, but perhaps it should be. Bankruptcy is about failure. Understandably, no one wants to fail, and no one wants to praise a process that is “about failure.” But that’s why it’s needed. Bankruptcy is a recognition of failure.

We should not be so afraid of failure that we cannot identify it when it happens, or call it by name.

So take a step back. Take a breath. And then recognize a basic truth: If the Big Three cannot survive the current market climate, then they have failed.

Formal bankruptcy recognizes their failure. And would allow them to “move on.”

And think, for a moment, about those pitiable CEOs and CFOs and COOs. Under a receivership, they don’t get their bonuses, like in our bailed-out mortgage and banking industry. Instead, they are more likely to receive the blessings of responsibility: pink slips.

All contracts get put on hold, many are voided. The business’s receivers take control, and all claims upon the assets of the company get sorted out.

And, inevitably, the failed company’s assets go to new owners.

Some of the Big Three’s divisions are extraordinarily profitable. They get sold or auctioned off to the highest bidders, who then run them (it is hoped) at a profit. Continued...