So This Is Where We Are Now...

I'm not saying anyone is being disingenuous, but I'm a little scared that bailouts are now something people apply for in the court of public opinion. Seeing news reports, like the one below (via Bloomberg) makes me prickle a little bit, especially because CIT's 505 Fifth Ave. headquarters has the appearance of a nightclub I probably couldn't gain admission to.

July 13 (Bloomberg) -- CIT Group Inc., the century-old lender that hasn't been able to persuade the government to back its debt sales, says its demise would put 760 manufacturing clients at risk of failure and "precipitate a crisis" for as many as 300,000 retailers.

A collapse would ripple across the "small and medium-sized businesses who rely on CIT to operate -- to pay their vendors, ship goods to their customers and make their payroll," the New York-based lender said in internal documents obtained by Bloomberg News that make the case for its importance to the U.S. economy. CIT spokesman Curt Ritter declined to comment on the documents.

The full story is here, but the real question is not whether CIT gets bailed out or not. The question to me is what happens as access to bailout money begins to become a function of a company's ability to effectively appeal to regulators and the masses for federal dollars.

What happens when people without organized political savvy really need bailing out? To use a metaphor appropriated from Minyanville, how many bullets are left in their depression-fighting gun?