Since there's one standard for automakers and another for bankers, the quickest way for GM to pick up some loose change would be to buy a few banks and thus get the company's mitts on some of the Treasury's $700 billion. If insurance companies are doing it, why not GM?

A story on the Bloomberg wire on November 17 told us that four of the world's biggest insurers, including Transamerica and Hartford Financial Services Group, may buy some ailing S&Ls in trouble with the Office of Thrift Supervision for making shifty loans. That way the insurance giants can join the excited line at the back door of the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and dip into the moolah. "Hartford's $10 million acquisition of Sanford, Florida-based Federal Trust Corp.," Bloomberg's reporters wrote, "may entitle it to $3.4 billion of U.S. capital. Lincoln National in Philadelphia may win access to $3 billion by taking over Newton County Loan & Savings, which has three full-time employees and $7.3 million of assets."

Whenever the issue is one of giving money to big industrial corporations employing real, live workers, particularly workers in labor unions, the commentariat hauls up the Double Standard and nails it to the top mast, next to the Jolly Roger.

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