The bare-faced cheek of bailed-out capitalism never ceases to amaze me. In the IPO document being put out to anyone loopy enough to buy New Reborn General Motors, one of the major selling points is the company’s ‘very healthy debt to earnings ratio’. The reason it’s healthy is that the taxpayers wrote it off for GM, but now find themselves being foreclosed by banks who wouldn’t lend GM the money…..because for years the company had been a crock.

To even start paying the US taxpayer back, GM will have to double its current rate of earnings – this in a market on its backside. Ironically, the main reason they won’t get anywhere near this target is that the folks who bailed them out are in arrears and/or unemployed and/or about to be one or both of those….and Asia is knocking out better-made cars at half the price.

Here I’m afraid we do have the USA’s problem perfectly described in one case history: the saving of a lame duck for blue-collar political reasons not unrelated to the home state of former Senator Obama – a President who lacks the balls to deal with self-obsessed bankers, and the economic literacy to put together a plan for the structural reform of US business. Meanwhile, just slightly off-stage are the noises of Goldman Sachs MoU’s gobbling their way through the trough.

The American dream is turning into the American nightmare. Like us in the UK, the country lacks the breadth of political class to face the reality of drastic change. But its situation is many times worse because it has a checks-and-balances system saying cut, stimulate, in, out, up, down and sideways.

Notably, it also has a President busy blaming everyone else for the country’s woes. And I suspect this is at the heart of the situation right now: after the November elections, he’s going to be a lame duck. At that point, the US voter needs to put on a thinking cap and elect a born leader – regardless of his or her Party label.