Jim Bunning Voted Against Auto Bailout

Speaking of the Tigers



2009 is gonna rock!

gs78 wrote:

TG wrote:

gs78 wrote:

TG wrote:

gs78 wrote:

I am against socialism


But i rather see Obama spend 15 billion creating new jobs than giving out 15 billion to an industry that runs things like it was the 1950s

And how exactly do you expect him to create new jobs?

I don't know perhaps the way FDR created jobs during the Great Depression

It is a different time though. And a different situation. If we can avoid entering another Great Depression, why would we say no to that?

We are already in a depression



But the Big 3 can't continue to pay 6 figure salaries to blue collar workers and millions to white collar workers; producing a product that is out of reach for many families




You could loan all the money in the world and it won't fix the problem

Why would we want to make the depression worse than?
If we know we are in one then we need to solce it, not say oh well deal with it yourself.

gs78 wrote:

TG wrote:

gs78 wrote:

TG wrote:

gs78 wrote:

If the Japanese offered your family 10 times what your house is worth


Wouldn't your family sell



How is that giving something up

I want the Japanese out of this country. And my house isn't a business. My house isn't the way many people make a living, which we are selling and sending to another company.

Even Japanese baseball players




I understand where you coming from


I don't like seeing the Asians dominate the world economy either

haha. Okay Japenese baseball players are a little bit different.... somehow. haha

Tigers don't have any

Well yah. But my point is they aren't completely taking over....

Like I said earlier; I don't have a problem giving out loans to the auto industry



But they have to give to get


All Bunning and the Senate did was reject the proposal



It doesn't mean it is off the table


They will get the money


But they have to agree restructure things; [ Not just worker pay cuts but white collar pay cuts and executive cuts too]


Otherwise they gonna be in the same mess down the road

TG wrote:

gs78 wrote:

TG wrote:

gs78 wrote:

TG wrote:

gs78 wrote:

If the Japanese offered your family 10 times what your house is worth


Wouldn't your family sell



How is that giving something up

I want the Japanese out of this country. And my house isn't a business. My house isn't the way many people make a living, which we are selling and sending to another company.

Even Japanese baseball players




I understand where you coming from


I don't like seeing the Asians dominate the world economy either

haha. Okay Japenese baseball players are a little bit different.... somehow. haha

Tigers don't have any

Well yah. But my point is they aren't completely taking over....

Don't be so sure


Look for more Asian Players to play in MLB in the next 10-20 years

gs78 wrote:

Like I said earlier; I don't have a problem giving out loans to the auto industry



But they have to give to get


All Bunning and the Senate did was reject the proposal



It doesn't mean it is off the table


They will get the money


But they have to agree restructure things; [ Not just worker pay cuts but white collar pay cuts and executive cuts too]


Otherwise they gonna be in the same mess down the road

Why are we cutting the lower workers pay? Yes I know we need to cut the upper guys.... but the lower workers aren't doing anything wrong.

Baseball is an international game

One Day;


MLB will have teams worldwide

TG wrote:

gs78 wrote:

Like I said earlier; I don't have a problem giving out loans to the auto industry



But they have to give to get


All Bunning and the Senate did was reject the proposal



It doesn't mean it is off the table


They will get the money


But they have to agree restructure things; [ Not just worker pay cuts but white collar pay cuts and executive cuts too]


Otherwise they gonna be in the same mess down the road

Why are we cutting the lower workers pay? Yes I know we need to cut the upper guys.... but the lower workers aren't doing anything wrong.

That is what the UAW objected to


While Executives get to keep all their perks


However; the only way the Big 3 will survive is for all employees to make less money [ at least in the short run]


White and Blue Collar alike

Even worse is that China, Arab contries and Russia own so many of our US companies. Pittsburgh Steel, among many others, is now Russian owned. We use this foreign owned steel in our American cars. I wish they would not have allowed foreign countries to buy our national security based industries!

GoGetEmTigers wrote:

Even worse is that China, Arab contries and Russia own so many of our US companies. Pittsburgh Steel, among many others, is now Russian owned. We use this foreign owned steel in our American cars. I wish they would not have allowed foreign countries to buy our national security based industries!

But they did

And we are paying the price for it

gs78 wrote:

GoGetEmTigers wrote:

Even worse is that China, Arab contries and Russia own so many of our US companies. Pittsburgh Steel, among many others, is now Russian owned. We use this foreign owned steel in our American cars. I wish they would not have allowed foreign countries to buy our national security based industries!

But they did

And we are paying the price for it

That is for sure!

Americans need to go back to the saying "It's not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!" We all need to pitch in to save America, not just save the Auto industry, but save, and bring back, American owned companies. Yes, help the Auto industry, but with conditions to the LOAN!

We see what the banks did with their hand out... not use it for loans, but to buy other companies, lay odd employees, and buy Govt bonds. They totally took the US government, and Senators like Bunning were against seeing another industry steal from the US government!

TG wrote:

catbox_9 wrote:

TG wrote:

catbox_9 wrote:

TG wrote:

Well I don't glame the owner of the trade center for canceling him.

I wouldn't go if he was there after he pretty much said you Detroit workers who's jobs will all be affected by this. He doesn't have to care, he won't be affected because he is rich.

I don't think it had anything to do with the Detroit workers. He's from Kentucky so he shouldn't care about the people of one city in a state he's not representing. The auto industry has a big impact in Michigan but very little outside of there. Other than my uncle (who lives in Michigan) I don't know a single person who works for the auto industry. I'd venture to guess Kentucky is similar to California in that regard.

Alright, then if he isn't affected by it, doesn't understandit, and really doesn't care, then we don't need him here.

What is your opinion on coal fields?
The Eastern Mountain Cold Fields (located in Kentucky) are the most productive cold fields in that nation. That is what Bunning should be concerned with.

I really am not worried about the coal fields. But I'm not going to go to Kentucky and try to make money in that area from people who are suffering. I'm not going to come somewhere and act like I care about them, but basically vote against them having jobs.

His "making money" in Michigan is signing baseballs. While he will get paid, the payment he'll get isn't significant enough to where he'd travel out of state to get it. More than anything, he was giving fans of his a chance to get his autograph at a reasonable fee.

gs78 wrote:

But the fact the Big 3 has wasted billions of dollars is not a factor


If they hadn't wasted money; they would not be in this mess

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

TG wrote:

Wasted. Past tense. So now they need help. If they have the inteligence of a 5 year old they understand they have made mistakes and need to fix them. And without the LOAN, they can't do that.

Okay....

I'm going to go buy a $2,500,000 house. I don't have a job so I won't be able to make the payments for long before I run out of money. I made a mistake. Fix me!

And please don't be so naive to think this "loan" is really a loan...they won't ever pay it back. There's a reason the national deficit is trillions of dollars - the government borrows money that it never pays back.

TG wrote:

gs78 wrote:

I wish I could waste lots of money

And get a loan with no questions asked

Waste? More like make cars. People don't buy them and what do they do? Sure, they should have made better models for the economy or whatever, but they never will without a loan.

While people do need automobiles and the "big 3" do make automobiles, they were still very wasteful. They pay their employees way too much driving the price way too high for their vehicles. This problem is confounded by the fact their cars are inferior to Asian imports...that's why people buy foreign. I was stunned last summer when I was in Michigan and I saw so many American cars. I halfway expected Michiganders to have blind allegiance to "their" cars, but I didn't think it would be that extreme. The vast majority of cars I see day to day are foreign....most domestic vehicles are trucks. The Asians haven't had a lot of success with trucks because non-Americans have little use for trucks.

catbox_9 wrote:

TG wrote:

Wasted. Past tense. So now they need help. If they have the inteligence of a 5 year old they understand they have made mistakes and need to fix them. And without the LOAN, they can't do that.

Okay....

I'm going to go buy a $2,500,000 house. I don't have a job so I won't be able to make the payments for long before I run out of money. I made a mistake. Fix me!

And please don't be so naive to think this "loan" is really a loan...they won't ever pay it back. There's a reason the national deficit is trillions of dollars - the government borrows money that it never pays back.

we honeslty need to get the foeign cars out of the US... but the prob is that like with ford 85% of the parts and stuff are from foreign countries and Toyota of all cars is made 90% in the US..see the delema our american casr are being produced in foreign countruies and the foreign cars are being produced in the USA. We need to keep all foreign cars out and put american cars in.


And they need to stop over production.. it is killing us... we need to slow production and when more is needed they speed it up a little bit... but no the big time people could give 2 shits less when they are sitting up in their fancy mansion and shit and we ... The middle to Lower class people suffer because of it... like i know people who have lost so much money on insurance, health care, and so forth... that they almost have went into debt and people who are truck drivers and stuff who their familys are doing horrible financialy at this point in time.

Thank god my dad has a steady job and my mom has a semi steady job!

I just feel bad at time for people who are struggleing to make it by on anything and some cant even have a christmas this year ... or even barely a christmas!


But i am thankful for what i have and how easy my life is for me..Even tho its not that easy!

Anybody else agree with me!

One thing that people don't realize is that many foriegn car companies are owned by American car makers, and from 1998 to 2007, Chrysler and its subsidiaries were part of the German based DaimlerChrysler (now Daimler AG).

Quote :

On May 14, 2007 DaimlerChrysler AG announced the sale of 80.1% of Chrysler Group to American private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, L.P., although Daimler continues to hold a 19.9% stake. This was when the company took on its current name.[3] The deal was finalized on August 3, 2007.[4]

Cerberus is not an auto company, but a financial company. They don't know how to make cars (even though they have employees that do.) The top brass don't know how to run a car company!

GM is more of a foreign car company:

Quote :

It manufactures its cars and trucks in 35 different countries and sells them under the brands of Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GM Daewoo, GMC, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, Vauxhall, and Wuling.[7].

And like you said, many of the "American brands" are made in Mexico or Canada! My Buick Century is a CANADIAN CAR!

For many years GM made cars with Toyota, in California, by their "United Auto Works" group and sold them as the Geo Prizm (I owned one). I owned Toyota Corolla's before this one and thought I would get the best of both worlds getting a Prizm. Well, was I fooled. It did have the great Toyota engine and Transmission (GM did not know how to make a good small high gas economy/hi powered motor back then) so that is why they did the joint venture with Toyota. The drive train was great, but the GM supplied parts like electric window motors, brakes ect, stunk! It ended up being a cheaply made version of the Corolla! I must say my current Buick is very well made. But again, it really is a foriegn car (Canada)!

I have been drawn to replace it with a new US car, but every time I check where the car is made, it turns out to be Mexico! How is this helping Americans, except the execs in Detroit. It does not help the American auto worker!

Yet, I can buy a Toyota, Subaru, or Nissan that IS MADE BY US AUTO WORKERS in the USA using US made parts!

What a messed up world.

And don't think Ford is any better!

Quote :

In addition to the Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury brands, Ford also owns Volvo Cars of Sweden, and a small stake in Mazda of Japan and Aston Martin of England. Ford's former UK subsidiaries Jaguar and Land Rover were sold to Tata Motors of India in March 2008.

And many of their cars are made outside the USA!

Quote :

Ford has major manufacturing operations in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, the People's Republic of China, and several other countries, including South Africa where, following divestment during apartheid, it once again has a wholly owned subsidiary. Ford also has a cooperative agreement with Russian automaker GAZ.

If you want to see how messed up, and global our "US car companies" are, and how American based Toyota is, see the following:

Ford: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford

GM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors

Chrysler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler

Toyota: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota

It sure is messed up

Well, I never would've thought Bush would do something useful. Here are some reactions to the auto bailout loans...

'Non-Binding' Bailout
President Bush's parting gifts to Detroit and Obama.

Friday's taxpayer bailout of Detroit's auto makers isn't the worst moment of the Bush Presidency, but we'd put it in the top 10. President Bush will now avoid getting the blame for letting the companies declare bankruptcy on his watch. In return, he's essentially handing over GM and Chrysler to the political ministrations of the United Auto Workers and the green lobby, as mediated by Congress. Taxpayers are likely to own a piece of this Corvair for years -- and tens of billions of dollars -- to come.
[Review & Outlook] AP

Mr. Bush said Friday that allowing GM and Chrysler to file for bankruptcy "would leave the next President to confront the demise of a major American industry in his first days of office." (Ford, to its credit, declined the gilded noose.) That talk of "demise" is hyperbole given the bankruptcy laws that allow an orderly workout. And in any event, he's still leaving Barack Obama a major political fight over whether to restructure the companies with the goal of making money again, or with the goal of paying uncompetitive wages to make "green" cars that Americans may or may not want to buy. Mr. Bush's real motive was betrayed when Vice President Dick Cheney told Senate Republicans recently that if they voted down the bailout for Detroit, it's "Herbert Hoover time."

So the President is lending the last $15 billion or so available in the $350 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to keep GM and Chrysler afloat through inauguration, but not much longer than that. Opening the TARP for the first time to nonfinancial companies is itself a bad precedent that Democrats will cite as they use the next $350 billion for mortgage holders, states and cities, and anyone else with enough political clout.

Mr. Bush also crossed a line by agreeing to rescue a U.S. industry whose business and labor mistakes have been recognized for decades. The President justified it yesterday by noting that "In the midst of a financial crisis and a recession, allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action." But any struggling industry would qualify under that logic, and no doubt Congress will prove it before this recession is over.

By the way, a word that Mr. Bush didn't use yesterday was Cerberus, the hedge fund that owns the bulk of Chrysler. Perhaps that's because it would be too embarrassing if Americans figured out that middle-class taxpayers who don't earn anything close to UAW wages will now be rescuing Cerberus's rich investors. That's capitalism, circa 2008.

The Bush Treasury did lay out a set of terms and conditions that Detroit will supposedly have to meet to keep the money. We won't bore you with the details because the most important word attached to those conditions is "non-binding." As yesterday's White House fact sheet put it: "These terms and conditions would be non-binding in the sense that negotiations can deviate from the quantative targets above, providing that the firm reports the reasons for these deviations and makes the business case to achieve long-term viability in spite of the deviations."
In Today's Opinion Journal

Translation: The Obama Administration can wave them away as soon as it takes office in January.

And sure enough, within hours of Mr. Bush's announcement, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger declared that his union "will work with the Obama Administration and the new Congress to ensure that these unfair conditions are removed." These "unfair" conditions naturally include bringing Detroit's wage scales into line with those of foreign-owned auto makers in the U.S. The UAW complains in its press release that its members "have already made substantial sacrifices," and that view is sure to be echoed by the Democrats who run Capitol Hill.

Perhaps Mr. Obama will play against political type and drive a harder bargain with both the union and the companies. He'd also have to stare down the greens who want to dictate to Detroit what cars they can make, even if few want to own them. Mr. Obama would be smart to use his standing to force a bankruptcy-like workout -- both because bailout fatigue is growing among taxpayers, and because a failure to restructure Detroit will leave a running drain on federal resources for the rest of his Presidency.

Perhaps that isn't "Herbert Hoover time," but it's bad enough.

Survivor: Detroit
Published: December 19, 2008

It came as a relief that President Bush was willing to break free of ideology long enough to keep General Motors and Chrysler from collapsing into a pile of rubble on his watch.

The $17.4 billion in loans that the administration has offered the two carmakers — which the Senate did not have the good sense to do — represent a necessary bridge over the road to liquidation, protecting the economy from a potential wave of additional job losses. But they do not guarantee Detroit’s long-term survival.

President-elect Barack Obama’s administration will still have to make hard choices about how to help Michigan’s auto industry shrink and become more energy efficient. It must do so if there is any hope of Detroit becoming viable again and making cars that drivers would want to buy and that would make sense in an increasingly oil-hungry world.

Ford declined to take government money this time, believing it can survive on its own.

There is some political candy in the conditions that Mr. Bush placed on the loans to Detroit’s other two carmakers; the companies are required to get rid of their jets and their executive bonuses. It would have been far better to have demanded that the top executives step down — a necessary step to push substantive change through Detroit’s entrenched mind-set.

Moreover, oversight of the program has been left to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. That is an odd choice considering his visceral aversion to the government’s involvement in private-sector business and his erratic and indecisive handling of the banking system rescue.

It is highly uncertain that the automakers can clear even the near-term hurdles of the loans: by Feb. 17 they must convince their bondholders to convert at least two-thirds of their debts into equity and they must renegotiate union contracts to bring down wages and benefits into line with those at the factories of Japanese carmakers in the South by the end of next year.

The United Auto Workers, which must also swallow the end of the jobs bank and allow car companies to use their devalued equity for half of their contributions into the fund for retiree health care, welcomed the White House’s loans but complained about “unfair conditions, singling out workers.”

Despite its weaknesses, this plan is a credible attempt to get Detroit’s two most fragile companies through the end of the year without running out of money. Bondholders and the U.A.W. should support it.

The incoming Obama administration still must morph this into a plan for long-term survival. Cutting debts and reducing compensation costs would help Detroit’s automakers in the immediate future.

We expect that after Jan. 20, the next government will craft a plan that trades its support for a credible commitment by the car companies to make the needed investments in energy efficiency. Until then, the businesses need to survive.

Let Detroit die
It's not often I agree with Republican nutcases - but on the pointlessness of the US auto industry handout, they are right

It's not often that I find myself on the same side as right-wing Republican politicians. But for the past two weeks I've been cheering the neocon nutcases as they tried to prevent the big motor manufacturers from receiving government money for their failed business model. The Democrats, by contrast, thought the handout was an excellent idea.

So did George Bush, who has just driven the senate's decision, and his own party, off the road. Bush maintained that letting GM and Chrysler collapse "would deal an unacceptably painful blow to hardworking Americans", but as if to show he couldn't give a damn about such people, he insisted that the rescued manufacturers cut their workers' wages and benefits.

There might have been some justification for bailing out the banks – their collapse would have brought the rest of the global economy down – but there is no excuse for this new round of corporate socialism. The potential failure of GM, Chrysler and Ford, like that of Jaguar Land Rover, is entirely of their own making. Long after it became clear that people wanted smaller, more economical cars, they continued to produce monstrous guzzlers. As SUVs rust in showrooms all over America, it looks as if the only thing which will sustain the "Big Three" over the next year or two is even more government money.

Now that the US package has been approved, European manufacturers will clamour even more loudly for the €40bn they say they deserve for being almost as useless as their competitors across the Atlantic. The British government has already been in talks with Jaguar Land Rover - one of Europe's dirtiest companies – to keep the pollution flowing at state expense. If this bail-out goes ahead, British taxpayers will be paying an Indian company to produce cars for the wealthy, to help them drive the world towards climate breakdown. What a great deal.

Just think what could be done with money like this if it were invested instead in a green energy revolution. Not only would it stimulate lasting manufacturing jobs, it could also fund the emergency measures required to prevent runaway climate change. But on both sides of the Atlantic, governments plead poverty when they are asked to invest in the future, then lavish funding on the past. Never underestimate the lobbying power which lurks behind sunk costs.

Let the failed car companies go down. Yes, it will hurt, but not nearly as much as letting them survive.

Detroit's Holiday Package
President Bush's deal with GM and Chrysler might work, if Barack Obama enforces it as president.

CHRISTMAS HAS come early for General Motors and Chrysler. Yesterday, the Bush administration pledged up to $17.4 billion for the two distressed carmakers -- enough money to save them from bankruptcy. Actually, the cash comes not as a gift, but as loans, with strings attached. Still, it does give GM and Chrysler a second chance at survival, and that's more than they got from Congress, which adjourned last week, unable to agree on a bailout bill.

This is not an optimal result. After years of substandard performance, the U.S. auto industry had itself to blame for most of its problems, and in normal times the two companies should have been left to the tender mercies of a bankruptcy court. To finance the bailout, the administration dipped into the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a $700 billion pot of money intended to shore up the financial sector. It sets a troubling precedent to use TARP to rescue not only a specific industrial sector but selected companies in that sector.

But the only thing worse than the administration's plan would have been doing nothing. These are anything but normal times. As the U.S. and world economies spiral downward, the collapse of GM and Chrysler could have crippled many of their suppliers and possibly Ford -- and even could have endangered the U.S. operations of Asian and European companies. It was worth trying to avoid this economic shock as long as the government used its leverage to exact drastic changes in the way the two companies and their factory employees' union, the United Auto Workers, do business.
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On this score, the Bush administration seems to have struck the right balance, requiring the companies, their bondholders and the UAW to make painful but necessary sacrifices in return for the money. Specifically, GM and Chrysler must convert two-thirds of their debt to equity and swear off bonuses and other perks such as corporate jets; the union will have to take half of scheduled retiree health fund payments in stock rather than cash, renegotiate work rules and accept pay and benefits no higher than nonunion workers by the end of 2009. UAW President Ronald A. Gettelfinger blasted the latter provision; House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank labeled it "an unfair assault" on working people and called on President-elect Barack Obama to undo it once he takes office.

This is not terribly convincing, economically or morally. No, wage equalization won't solve all of the industry's problems, but it will save companies about $800 per vehicle, at a time when every little bit helps. That doesn't seem unfair in return for saving thousands of jobs that would still provide $45 an hour in wages and benefits, as opposed to about $28 for the average worker-taxpayer.

The president-elect himself struck a rather different note, urging all stakeholders to "make the hard choices necessary to achieve long-term viability." Sticking to that position, despite the inevitable pressures from both management and a union to which he and his party are deeply indebted, will require Mr. Obama to make some hard choices of his own.

Bush’s ‘rescue’ of free market more of a rubout

By Jim Wooten | Friday, December 19, 2008, 07:54 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In many respects, the left and the right are of shared sentiment about the presidency of George W. Bush.

The left regrets Iraq and the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against rogue states that support terrorists. For the right, it’s the policies that continued this week with Friday’s announcement of a $17.4 billion bridge loan to General Motors and Chrysler.

“Under ordinary economic circumstances, I would say this is the price that failed companies must pay,” Bush said. “And I would not favor intervening to prevent the automakers from going out of business.” But, “if we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the automakers. … allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action.”

Those remarks are consistent with his admission to CNN’s Candy Crowley this week that “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”

Iraq and Afghanistan never struck me as the quagmire the left feared — and incessantly declared, jumping at every opportunity to find cataclysmic failure, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did last year in asserting that “… this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything.” It wasn’t and, promisingly, Barack Obama’s early signals suggest that candidate Obama and President Obama may have different definitions of withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq in 16 months.

For a president and his party, it’s far easier to favor policies that invite failure, or to declare that it happened during the other guy’s watch, than to have the world and historians know that President Obama and his party are responsible for it. President Bush is obviously guided now by the same sense of historical accountability that is likely to temper Obama on Iraq.

On Iraq, there’s never been any doubt that U.S. combat forces would leave. For the Bush Administration, that timetable was based “on success.” For Democrats, it was a fixed date. In either case, while there was no hard-and-fast exit timetable, there was general agreement that the U.S. should have an exit strategy.

With President Bush’s abandonment of free-market principles “to save the free market system,” conservatives find ourselves in the mode that liberals were and are on Iraq. Having intervened “to save the free- market system,” how do we get back out? What’s the exit strategy?

On Iraq, Democrats would have forced an exit sooner or later had Republicans not. There’s an entrenched anti-war bloc that has existed in this country since Vietnam.

But once business and government merge, as they are now doing, there is no constituency beyond gray-beard fuddy-duddies, Libertarians and a small band of fiscal conservative purists who will demand an exit strategy. Truly, there is no going back. A clean loan to the automobile companies, or better yet as Ronald D. Utt of the Heritage Foundation has suggested, an advance seven-year purchase of vehicles that would provide them about $10 billion, is far preferable to loans that come with car czars and federal rules on executive pay and perks.

I’m offended by sports and entertainment salaries and by outrageous Wall Street bonuses that suck up America’s creativity and employ it to find new ways to make money on debt. Meanwhile, some poor production worker who’s actually building a product suffers job loss because politicians and debt-mongers in the private sector thought it useful to put people in houses they couldn’t afford — and then to mix bad debt and good and sell it off.

But while offended by some marketplace practices, I don’t want politicians who are equally responsible for the economic downturn, determining what athletes, entertainers or business executives should be paid. I don’t want them making executive decisions for car companies. I don’t want them making investments in private-sector companies and then writing regulations or passing trade laws to protect that investment.

The president was right to intervene to contain the financial panic that had gripped Wall Street and the world. That panic would have decimated retirement savings for millions of working Americans.

But every step taken that abandoned free- market principles should have been one that limited future entanglement between business and government. Instead, we’re going the other way. We’re inviting politicians to find some scapegoats and then to manage businesses and industries, politicians who are incapable of designing government programs that work or of holding them accountable.

Bush has abandoned free-market principles, no question. Has he saved the free -market system? I fear just the contrary.

TOM WALSH
Someone needs to watch over changes at the Detroit 3

BY TOM WALSH • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • December 20, 2008

As a taxpayer who will soon be part-owner of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, and as a Detroiter who wants to see its automobile industry revive, I beg you, President-elect Barack Obama, to please name a fearless, respected, kick-butt car czar to ride herd on Detroit's reinvention.

Here's why:

• Because President George W. Bush's necessary and much-appreciated promise of $13.4 billion in immediate bridge loans for GM and Chrysler is just that -- merely a bridge to get them to you, Mr. Obama, without flatlining first.

• Because you, Mr. Obama, must be the enforcer of the binding conditions and fuzzy targets of this bailout plan.

• Because the auto companies and labor unions and bondholders and suppliers and dealers who are now obliged to sit down around Detroit's rickety table and restructure their industry, have wildly different priorities and constituencies. And therefore, they will be at each other's throats, blocking progress and stifling change, unless a no-nonsense car czar keeps everyone in check and on task.

Within minutes of the Bush bridge loan announcement Friday morning, after the perfunctory thank-yous, the key players started staking out turf and sharpening elbows for the battling ahead.

"While we appreciate that President Bush has taken the emergency action needed to help America's auto companies weather the current financial crisis, we are disappointed that he has added unfair conditions singling out workers," said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger.

Gettelfinger was protesting what the White House called targets for the automakers to achieve in return for federal loans. These targets include elimination of the jobs bank, which pays laid-off UAW workers most of their base pay for extended periods; and work rules and wages that are competitive with foreign-owned, nonunion auto plants.

"These conditions were not included in the bipartisan legislation endorsed by the White House," Gettelfinger said, adding, "We will work with the Obama administration and the new Congress to ensure that these unfair conditions are removed."

Talks have barely begun with owners of auto company bonds, who will certainly squeal about huge write-downs in the value of their investment.

Yet Cerberus Capital Management, the 80% owner of Chrysler that's receiving $4 billion from the first batch of federal loans, sounds dead set on wresting sacrifices from both bondholders and labor. "Unless Chrysler's labor costs can achieve parity with the foreign transplants, and without the restructuring of Chrysler's debt, Chrysler cannot be restored to long-term health and the government loan will be unlikely to be fully repaid," Cerberus said in a prepared statement Friday.

Uh-oh, we already have a recipient of government cash ruminating about scenarios under which it might not be paid back. Not a good sign.

That's why, Mr. Obama, we need a car czar who's respected, smart, utterly fearless and hell-bent on winning.

Think Roger Penske meets Warren Buffett meets Paul Volcker meets Vince Lombardi.

In Detroit, automotive finance people and engineers and dealers have been infighting among themselves and squabbling with labor unions for the past half-century.

We can see where that's gotten us -- to death's door.

So it's got to stop.

But old habits and animosities die hard. And these folks serve different masters. Gettelfinger can't just cut a deal because a bellicose U.S. senator or some Wall Street sharpie from Cerberus says so. Changes in UAW contracts must be ratified by rank-and-file members who may not care squat about what the senator or sharpie thinks.

The short-term overseer of this ragtag band of auto industry stakeholders is outgoing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. But Bush is said to be open to an Obama nominee coming on board to bridge the administrations.

GM, Chrysler and Ford Motor Co. are a long way from the promised land, Mr. Obama. Please give them a great leader to help them find their way.

Contact TOM WALSH at 313-223-4430 or twalsh@freepress.com

bobrob2004 wrote:

Let Detroit die
It's not often I agree with Republican nutcases - but on the pointlessness of the US auto industry handout, they are right

It's not often that I find myself on the same side as right-wing Republican politicians. But for the past two weeks I've been cheering the neocon nutcases as they tried to prevent the big motor manufacturers from receiving government money for their failed business model. The Democrats, by contrast, thought the handout was an excellent idea.

So did George Bush, who has just driven the senate's decision, and his own party, off the road. Bush maintained that letting GM and Chrysler collapse "would deal an unacceptably painful blow to hardworking Americans", but as if to show he couldn't give a damn about such people, he insisted that the rescued manufacturers cut their workers' wages and benefits.

There might have been some justification for bailing out the banks – their collapse would have brought the rest of the global economy down – but there is no excuse for this new round of corporate socialism. The potential failure of GM, Chrysler and Ford, like that of Jaguar Land Rover, is entirely of their own making. Long after it became clear that people wanted smaller, more economical cars, they continued to produce monstrous guzzlers. As SUVs rust in showrooms all over America, it looks as if the only thing which will sustain the "Big Three" over the next year or two is even more government money.

Now that the US package has been approved, European manufacturers will clamour even more loudly for the €40bn they say they deserve for being almost as useless as their competitors across the Atlantic. The British government has already been in talks with Jaguar Land Rover - one of Europe's dirtiest companies – to keep the pollution flowing at state expense. If this bail-out goes ahead, British taxpayers will be paying an Indian company to produce cars for the wealthy, to help them drive the world towards climate breakdown. What a great deal.

Just think what could be done with money like this if it were invested instead in a green energy revolution. Not only would it stimulate lasting manufacturing jobs, it could also fund the emergency measures required to prevent runaway climate change. But on both sides of the Atlantic, governments plead poverty when they are asked to invest in the future, then lavish funding on the past. Never underestimate the lobbying power which lurks behind sunk costs.

Let the failed car companies go down. Yes, it will hurt, but not nearly as much as letting them survive.

I agree

bobrob2004 wrote:

Well, I never would've thought Bush would do something useful. Here are some reactions to the auto bailout loans...

Bush


Where is an Arab with a pair of shoes to throw when you really need em