Election Issues Today

Big Automakers Benefit from Bush Benevolence

President Bush has granted Chrysler and General Motors some financial rescue money to the tune of a $17.4 billion loan from the bailout money that was signed into law as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which was designed to save the finance industry. Ford is not participating in this particular “loan.” And the Congress will have to go along with about $4 billion which would be distributed in February from the second half of original $700 billion bailout package. This is all so complicated. And…

The dollar amounts of these various bailouts is so staggering that we ordinary citizens can’t even comprehend how much money it would be in “real dollars.”  Like for buying groceries.  The U.S. Government is like the grandpa who can’t afford to buy Christmas presents for all of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but puts $3,000 on his credit cards anyway and says he felt he just “had” to.  President Bush found himself in the same situation.  He felt that he just “had” to save them.

President-elect Obama evidently concurred in Bush’s actions, and stated that the industry will be held accountable for the “long-term restructuring” that will be needed to save the auto industry in this country.

If U.S. automakers go broke, that is, if they just keep their assembly lines shut down for, say, a year, then a very high proportion of the U.S. populace would be out of their homes and standing in soup lines.  Can you even imagine such a situation being allowed to happen in the richest country in the World?

No, it will not be allowed to happen. But I can’t help but remember lessons from U.S. history about the “captains of industry” and “big oil” and how the real power brokers came to control the entire American economy.  Things haven’t changed much.