Crisis? What crisis?

By DAVID GREEN

What economic crisis? How can there be an economic crisis? Don't you believe the rumors.

After all, for two bastions of economic responsibility and good stewardship -- the New York Yankees and the United Auto Workers Union -- it is, apparently, the very best of times. In the past few days, the Yanks have signed lefthanded pitcher CC Sabathia to a $161 million contract and the UAW flatly refused to give an inch on its members' kings' ransom salaries and benefits as a condition for the auto industry to receive financial aid from the U.S. government.

How can we go against the good, altruistic and magnanimous judgment those two organizations have demonstrated for so long? And what the heck is wrong with Formula One, whose sanctioning body and team owners agreed Friday to dramatic changes that are expected to cut 30 percent of the cost of competing in the world grand prix series?

But seriously, folks, congratulations to FOTA, the Formula One Teams Association, and the Federation Internationale d le' Automobile (FIA). It's almost a man-bites-dog moment when the most extravagant and over-the-top racing organization in the world demonstrates such common sense. That, it is safe to say, is a pretty strong signal that times are tenuous.

From this corner, it appears that the Yankees, Sabathia and the UAW are all in deeper denial than Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

These are not the only examples of ridiculous, fiddling-while-Rome-burns behavior, but surely Major League Baseball's most iconic team and the UAW's unbelievably obtuse actions top the list -- especially on a weekend when Formula One embraces austerity. (Well, relative austerity, for them.)

In the baseball example, it's hard to decide which is the worst offender -- the Yankees organization which offered the obscene salary or the already-obscenely rich player who accepted it. In the case of the UAW, the stubborn defiance of union leadership in effect thumbs the organization's nose at anybody who may be faced with some belt-tightening in his or her life. "The rest of you chumps can tighten your belts," the UAW tells us. "We're not about to tighten ours."

I was already opposed to the notion of federal government bailouts, especially of financial institutions run aground by Wall Street fat cats. I was a little more sympathetic to the auto industry. It was hard for me to imagine a world without Ford and Chevrolet. Boy, has the UAW ever enlightened me.

After all, Ford, GM and Chrysler never should have given in to the extortion of the UAW. Decades ago, they should have shut down and moved their operations to right-to-work states. You can talk about quality and visionary engineering all you want, but the area in which foreign automakers won this war was in selection of its workforce.

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but it's getting easier and easier for me to root against the Yankees in baseball and for Toyota in NASCAR.