Apparently, Detroit's "Big Three" are ready to sell their capitalist souls to the federal government for $15 billion. (Link to story here.) In exchange for the short-term bailout, the automakers will be saddled with an overseer, dubbed the "car czar," who will be "in charge of setting guidelines for an industrywide overhaul, with the power to revoke the loans if the carmakers [aren't] taking sufficient steps to reinvent themselves." In other words, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler won't be running General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler anymore. Instead, the feds will be running them all. And why not, the government has already claimed a stake in the banks.
Brilliant, don't you think, central planning has worked so well everywhere it has been tried.
Memo to Congress: Please stop the madness.
2 comments:
Hey, if they want a handout from the government, there should be government oversite to make sure their using it to rebuild their companies rather than wasting it. I don't have a problem with that.
I do, however, have to take issue with loaning them the money in the first place. They buttered their bread.
Honda and Toyota have had hybrid and high mileage cars on the market for a decade, while the U.S. automakers continued to make huge gas gusslers. Now they claim that no one could have predicted $4 gasoline, and that it will take a few years to adjust their product line to meet the change in demand.
Please.
You're right, of course. IF the government loans them the money, some government oversight is warranted. But, a government takeover of a major industry just might not be the best idea in the world. And "IF" is the key to the sentence, the bailout should be stopped.
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