Yes to Wall Street, No to Main Street

The Bush administration and Congress recently took a lot of flak for giving $700 billion (with pinkie finger salute) to Wall Street financial firms to keep the credit valve open for average Americans. While I was opposed to the bailout for reasons not to get into right now, Congress seems to be sending mixed messages to the American worker.

The Senate was ready to approve a $15 lifeline loan to the Big 3 automakers to keep them afloat for a while. The check was all but written until the UAW decided that they would not take a pay cut. As before, my opinion on that is irrelevant.

What I am concerned about is the fact that congress approved $700 billion to financial firms without blinking and hemmed and hawed about giving a mere $15 billion to the B3 where a lot more jobs are at stake considering that auto parts suppliers and dealerships are also affected.

I do believe that financial firms and auto companies need new management structures, but I think it is wreck less for Congress to casually approve an exorbitant amount of money for financial firms and give a fraction of that to companies that employee a lot more middle class jobs.

Working for the buyout

At Embarq, we recently learned that we will be "merging" with another company. While we are still not sure what this will mean for Embarq, we are probably more unsure of what this means for employees. While the Greenville call center is one of Embarq's best performing centers, we are constantly being encouraged to be diverse and sell, sell, sell.

The merger will not be finalized until the new year, but I'm excited to see what opportunities, and possibly new services, the merger will bring.