Watching C-Span2 while grading papers.
The auto bailout has failed.
Came down to Union wage concessions; there weren’t any.
Various Senators are thanking their staffs and Harry Reid is banging on about how bad things are. Barbara Boxer is now saying if you didn’t vote for the bailout you don’t care about people. Now it goes to Treasurer Secretary Paulson to give up some TARP money, according to Boxer, in order to save the automakers.
Tag: auto bailout
Managed Bankruptcy: Better than a bailout?
Mitt Romney thinks so.
Loan or not, the long term issues must be confronted. Romney’s ideas seem reasonable.
Auto makers bailout – Open Forum
Apparently, no one likes my suggestion to sell Obama gear to bail out the (Sorta) Big Three automakers, so Congress is debating giving billions to them.
This week, Congress will consider whether to cough up billions of dollars to bail out the troubled companies.
There are loud advocates with strong arguments on both sides.
Proponents of a bailout say that the industry is a victim of the global financial crisis. Wall Street has been bailed out, so why not Detroit?
They say millions of jobs could be lost and more than $100 billion in wages sliced out of an already-fragile U.S. economy.
“It would be a travesty for the irresponsible, reckless behavior of Wall Street to result in the sweeping away of the American automobile industry,” said Mike Jackson, CEO of Autonation, the nation’s largest auto dealership group. “If indeed it came to bankruptcy, it’s going to make what happened with Lehman Brothers and all the consequences of that a nice day.”
On the other side are those who feel just as strongly that the automakers’ problems are their own doing, born of bad business decisions, uncompetitive labor agreements and vehicles that Americans have decided are second-rate.
In my very small sampling of friends, radio DJs, and Internet blogs, the verdict appears to be running against a bailout. Youngstown, Ohio’s Hot 101 radio station is running their own auto bailout promo, giving away a car, since the Washington DC version doesn’t help anyone except execs (at least that’s what the promo suggests).
What say you?
Bailoutarama – First the banks, now the cars, who's next?
Maybe the DNC; check out this email from Obama’s uber-campaign manager David Plouffe.
Friend —
Our friends at the Democratic National Committee laid it all on the line to bring change this year.
We’ve been reviewing the books, and the DNC went into considerable debt to secure victory for Barack and Joe. It took unprecedented resources to staff up all 50 states, train field organizers, and build the technology to reach as many swing voters as possible.
It worked.
But it also left the DNC in debt. So before we do anything else, we need to help pay for this winning strategy.
Make a donation of $30 or more now and you’ll get a limited edition 2008 Victory T-shirt.
The DNC’s 50-state field strategy was crucial to our campaign’s success, as well as victories for Democrats up and down the ballot. Their organizing infrastructure allowed us to compete — and win — in states that seemed insurmountable just four years ago.
They took out substantial loans to make it happen. The DNC didn’t hold back, and now, neither can we.
You were there for this campaign when we needed to reach out to more voters and compete in more states. Now we’re relying on grassroots supporters like you to come through for this movement once again.
We’ll get to work transforming this country. But first, we need to take care of the DNC.
Please make a donation of $30 or more today and receive your Obama Victory T-shirt:
Thank you for everything,
David
David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America
Can we take care of the DNC first? Yes We Can!
How about we fix the liquidity problems by selling off Obama brand name products?
Union guys who helped elect Obama can surely afford a few more t-shirts. Check out how the UAW fixes up the members.
Charles Martin points us to a brief but fine analysis by Larry Kudlow at National Review of the bailout biz. Kudlow point out how much the Big (shrinking) Three pay their employees versus the competition.
Total compensation per hour for the big-three carmakers is $73.20. That’s a 52 percent differential from Toyota’s (Detroit South) $48 compensation (wages + health and retirement benefits). In fact, the oversized UAW-driven pay package for Detroit is 132 percent higher than that of the entire manufacturing sector of the U.S., which comes in at $31.59.
I don’t care how much money Congress throws at GM. With that kind of oversized comp-package they are not gonna be competitive. It’s throwin’ bad money after a bad cause. What a way to start the new Obama era.
Billion t-shirts should cover it.