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I’m as angry as anybody about the bailouts, but I don’t agree with the people who are perturbed about the TV commercial General Motors ran over the Thanksgiving holiday.

The ad has no narrator, just a gentle piano rendition of the Seventies Hollies hit “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” in the background. It begins with images of memorable failures – NASA rockets that crashed on the launch pad, motorcycle daredevil Evil Knievel injuring himself, the fraternity members in Animal House after Dean Wormer has informed them that he is shutting down their frat. But then John Belushi rallies the Delta House brothers, a rocket soars into the sky, a boxer down for the count gets back on his feet. “We all fall down,” reads a sentence on the screen. “Thank you for helping us get back up.”

I loved the ad - and was shocked to see it. After all, the Wall Street bankers, hedge fund operators and financial speculators who drove our economy and the globe into a ditch two years ago had to be dragged before Congress and the media before they would so much as admit that “mistakes were made,” to use Richard Nixon’s passive diction. Most of the companies that were rescued with no-strings-attached taxpayer dollars were quick to pay them back (on easy terms) and now behave as if they had never run into trouble in the first place. The newly resuscitated financial industry used its political might (and taxpayer money) in a massive lobbying campaign to kill any congressional legislation that might have prevented them from earning billions more on useless speculation. Bonuses are once again breaking records.

GM, at least, has some sense of obligation or appreciation for what we taxpayers did for the company, its employees and investors. It doesn't make our lives any better, but I, for one, find that refreshing.

Not so for everyone. A good deal of the commentary online about the ad portrays it as a cynical move by a stupid company, directed at cretins and Democrats.

There was a lot of similar hostility in evidence when GM executives went to DC to beg for a bailout back in 2009. Members of Congress criticized them for flying to Washington on corporate jets. The White House fired GM’s CEO as part of the bailout. Compared to that, the Wall Street titans were treated like royalty. No one demanded that they take the bus from New York, nor have the CEOs of Goldman, Citibank, Bank of America, etc. lost their jobs – much less been prosecuted – for their conduct.

The difference was striking at the time, and it remains so today, a reflection of the degree to which money is worshiped and wealth revered in this country, long past time when average Americans should know better. After all, GM employs people to produce things that people in this country actually use: cars. As a pointed piece in last week's New Yorker points out, "much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless." “The most profitable industry in America” – the financial industry – “doesn’t design, build, or sell a single tangible thing.”

Try driving a Collateralized Debt Obligation down the street sometime.

You wouldn’t think the leader of the free world would be so willing to outsource a massive foreclosure scandal to state attorneys general, judges, regulators and the big banks that created the mess in the first place.

But that’s exactly what President Obama has done, standing aside while 50 state attorneys general launch investigations, while banks implement their own voluntary moratoriums, announcing they have halted some, but not all, foreclosure proceedings.

A growing number of politicians, civil rights and consumer groups and labor unions have called for a nationwide moratorium amid allegations that banks violated foreclosure laws by using sloppy, false or fraudulent paperwork to kick people out of their homes.

But President Obama doesn’t like the idea of a foreclosure moratorium, which he fears could put the kibosh on his fragile recovery.

Where is the administration’s effort at finding some other creative solution to the mess the big banks have created across the country? What we find instead are regulators that have been ignoring clear warning signs about the banks’ troubled foreclosure crisis.

The federal response so far has been limp at best: a Justice Department inquiry (short of an investigation) and a call by a federal regulator for the banks to voluntarily verify that their foreclosure paperwork is in order.

Recent press reports call into question whether the banks have even implemented the foreclosure moratoriums they promised. Meanwhile more banks, this time Wells-Fargo, acknowledge they have also violated the laws governing foreclosure by submitting unverified documents to take people’s homes. Isn’t there an election coming up where the Democrats are fighting to maintain control of Congress, with their entire agenda at stake? Isn’t there already one party that has expertly cornered the whole do-nothing stick-your-head-in-the-sand approach to unemployment and foreclosure? Doesn’t the president know how awful it looks to most people to have the bailed-out banks getting away with yet more hanky-panky?

You would think the president would want to appear more engaged in this issue that’s so close to the heart of our on-going economic troubles.

His treasury secretary fears “unintended consequences". Apparently the administration would prefer the banks continue to foreclose on people using phony documents. While Wall Street predicts a catastrophe if a moratorium is implemented. If the big bankers want to know who created a catastrophe that will cost them billions, they only need to look in the mirror.

Thank You vs F*** You

Around the Web: Outsourcing Foreclosure `Catastrophe'