Sunday, December 21, 2008

The Bailout

Click here for the Big Three's take.

Along those same lines, this excerpt from a Yahoo news story today needs no comment:

HILO, Hawaii – A Hilo Chevrolet dealer who tried to crush his Asian auto competition found the stunt a little harder to pull off than expected. Island Chevrolet general sales manager James Severtson arranged for a Chevrolet Suburban SUV outfitted with massive tires costing $5,000 apiece to drive over a Honda Accord.

On the first attempt Friday, the monster truck blew a hydraulic hose and leaked vital fluid while the Honda remained intact and ready for more.

2 comments:

Ben said...

While throwing money at a failing enterprise seems stupid (at best), the idea of the big three failing still disturbs me. When GM moved operations out of Flint down to Mexico in the 1980s, Flint suddenly became the #1 most crime-ridden city in the country. I don't want to reward the idiots at the top who led American companies into this mess, but the collapse of these companies (unless they can successfully reorganize after bankruptcy) would lead to huge numbers of jobless people not just at the companies but at the suppliers and surrounding service industries. Ignoring this problem to let the CEOs fail strikes me as a similar mentality to bombing cities full of civilians because we don't like the dictators running the country. It's a passive vs. active course of action, but the overall effects are similar.

I don't like any of the alternatives for these failing companies, including ignoring the situation.

ds said...

It's a tough call. It seems like any arguments against the auto bailout fell by the wayside once we bailed out Wall Street to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

On a related note, George Will (yes, I am praising a George Will article. This is not a typo) recently wrote an interesting column on the auto bailout noting its disturbing nature from a Constitutional standpoint. Congress outright rejected it, yet the President approved it using funds from the Wall Street bailout, which directly violated the terms of how that money was supposed to be used. Kind of a violation of the concept of separation of powers.

Then again, most people who voted against the thing in Congress actually wanted it to happen but didn't want to support it, so they were happy that the Pres was willing to do it.

Regardless, I think the parody ad and the Yahoo article are still priceless.