Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Bailout Committee

What happens when your average company runs out of money? They file for bankruptcy, right? Isn't that how the system is supposed to work?

Apparently, that never crossed Senator Dodd's mind. Instead, he immediately started thinking about ways to take your money and hand it out, even though it very well may just postpone their collapse. How do we know this? Dodd said so last Wednesday, as reported in the Hartford Courant today:

Sen. Chris Dodd — whose committee seems to be Bailout Central — has been in the forefront of yet another debate over taxpayer billions, although this latest effort for the auto industry has been hanging by a thin thread.
...

The day after a Tuesday hearing went into the night, he said, "I'd like to do something, but the last thing I'd like to do is write a check for these people without some major changes."

He was, at that point, warming up to the idea of a pre-packaged bankruptcy — a controlled restructuring — for the automobile manufacturers.

"I'm finding this a more attractive idea as I find out more about it," he said.

As he finds out more about it? Has he never heard of bankruptcy? That should have been his first thought, not something he "is finding out more about" several weeks into this thing.

If the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee is just learning about Chapter 11, we are in more trouble than I thought. And that is saying something.