Who will be the first?

Listen up, DC Coneheads. Use your bully pulpit for something worthwhile for a change. Stop deluding yourselves about this recession. The money you are spending to keep people in their homes, is not going to nuclear families.  

These people, even if they are families in the traditional sense, drank the kool aid Mr and Mrs Jones next door were selling, and scammed the system better than the best Russian mobster ever shook down an oil company.  A deuce to a duck says the recidivism rate for the bailees will reach towards the geometrical end of the progression scales.

Why?  Because even if they see the light and manage to keep their snouts out of the trough and their plastic in the dinnerware and not in their wallet, they will be losing their jobs as fast as rats flee the restroom when the pink panther shows up.  Put another less colorful way: who will the buyers be?

For the love of God, man.  Stand and be counted.  Use some of that money to bring back jobs from overseas. Take that jawbone and put it to work playing the bass drum on the head and shoulders of some of the execs and their boards who have outsourced the most jobs. 

The whining coming out of the DC Conehead Nation is shameful.  

"We can't afford to lose any more jobs to overseas markets"

Duh!  We know that, Gomer.  What are YOU going to do about it?  That's what we want to know. (Sorry PS)

Pssst!  Shusshhh!  Yeah, you buddy.  Come over here for a minute.  I've got a hot tip:  

You have the power to use the jawbone power of previous presidents and statesmen from the public pulpit to take some jobs anybody can do:   the telephone service jobs that every company from Hewlett Packard to Sweaty Betty's Bargain Bonanza have booted to Bengal.

So many of those jobs have gone to the Indian sub-continent that the delightful lilt of the Indu-English accent has created a sub-sector economic boomlet all its own: the replacement of thrown and broken telephone handsets.

The lilting accent has jumped to third on the comic impressionists' Hot 100, replacing Rednecks.   Spanglish and French are #1 and #2.  Granted, these jobs don't pay CEO level salaries, but they are jobs nonetheless, with all the trickle down effects of steady employment like eating and sleeping indoors. The current requirements for employment seem to be simple.

1. The successful candidate must be able to read.

2. The successful candidate must master the phrase, "Please wait while I put you on hold."

This will not only start the economy on a micro-recovery, it will kindle the home fires into nice warm place to be.  And in the kicker is, you look like a hero. Hell, you are a hero, if you pull it off.

Somebody knows how many companies have outsourced these jobs. I don't, but in the immortal words of that great American, Tex Spittle, "I gaurandamtee you" that the first firm with a good PR department to announce they are "bringing the boys (jobs) home" will rise to the top of their sector, become real heroes to the American public, be the media event of the day, and take the first REAL step towards putting the world's economy on track for recovery.

America is the world's whale when it comes to consumption. Energy use has owned the headlines in the past. Unseen then and more important today are consumer items.   Look around you. Items like clothes, TVs, cribs, toys, lamps, light bulbs; all these things and more. We buy and use more of everything than anyone else in the world, with the possible exception of rice and toilet paper. (Maybe not TP. What we lack in numbers, we more than make up for in size.)

Ironic, isn't it?  For years other nations and the world's media have heaped opprobrium on the US for its gross conspicuous consumption.   The same gross conspicuous consumption that can now be the world's ticket out of the hellhole of another great depression. 

It's simple really. If we can't buy it because we don't have jobs, the Chinese can't make it, the Swedes and Greeks can't ship it, the Indians can't customer no-service it, the French can't call us couchons. If we have no money to spend, the Mexicans can't build it, grow it, pick it, clip it or mow it. If we can't buy, then the entire world starts losing jobs and swirl goes the toilet.

Hey, CEOs! Want to be remembered in history for something other than greedy, stupid jerks. Now is your chance. Bring back the customer service jobs at least. Put unemployed people to work. Money will start to flow. Mortgages can be ... wait for it ... actually paid.

Your shareholders will love you. Your board of directors won't stop you. Hell, they might even give you a bonus.