Adam Smith Didn't Drive An Escalade

Hypocrisy, of course, is many a politician's stock in trade, but the breathtaking duplicity of those southern friend senators and now the White House is breathtaking.

The senators put the kibosh on the $14 billion bridge-loan bill for General Motors and Chrysler because the United Auto Workers would not agree to on-the-spot wage concessions.

While their Adam Smith-esque "let the market sort things out" view would seem to be altruistic, these senators had no problem with government intervention when it came to throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at foreign automakers to build plants and other facilities in their home state.

President Bush had assured automakers that the $700 billion economic stabilization package would be tapped soonest for the bridge loan, which only seems fair since Wall Street big were showered with money from the package when they peed in their sandboxes.

But for the first time yesterday, the White House also used the c-word in connection with a loan, and I'm not talking catalytic converter.