I UNDERSTAND a lynch mob hunting down a serial rapist; I do NOT condone it. You know I feel problems are more often solved by action than inaction, but with the auto bailout (as with TARP) it was insulting to see the same people who demanded a Bush bailout equate Obamas with Marxism a few months later, and nauseating to see them get away with it. As far as the intervention itself, the problem wasn't deficits, but deeper institutional problems causing them. The only intervention that MIGHT have been legitimate was company reform, not handing them more money to squander. To the extent handing them money could only be justified if conditional on systemic changes the companies strenuously resisted to the point it's debatable whether any were accomplished. For the record, while UAW benefit packages should've been on the table with everything else, the UAW had been regularly accepting reduced benefits for decades while the Big Three alternately exported their jobs and flirted with bankruptcy. Low quality planned obsolescene and dictating consumers wants even as fuel prices climbed and economics put an end to the notion of buying a new car every two years had more to do with the Big Threes demise than unions, however convenient a scapegoat unions may be (funny how foreign auto manufacturers with American plants never have problems profits or the UAW ).

Did you see why though? It was flagged when very incomplete and lacking sources, which has since been remedied; the second flag was essentially a "bump" to prompt the decision the first never produced. "Free market capitalism" is a phrase I won't even try to discuss because it's meaning varies by adherent. One free market capitalist supports some regulation to disavow laissez-faire and another opposes all regulation to disavow Crony Capitalism; the only constant is that The Program is ROCK SOLID111.

I think it was an outstanding idea; it would strongly encourage Americans to buy American, as you note, since they'd directly benefit from the companys improved performance, and could also put an end to the Big Three decided what we want to buy if someone decided to round up proxy votes. Of course, literal public ownership of GM would also be REAL socialism in its purest form, but unfortunately it wasn't a serious proposal, just Alexander grandstanding to generate populist appeal and undercut Obama.


Questioning their motives is reasonable, but the charges were and remain valid regardless of motive. It all depends on whether we want to screw increasingly impotent unions so badly we'll ignore US businesses exploiting non-existent human rights overseas, and even subsidize it with our purchases. Yes, a quality product made by a skilled union worker guaranteed that a fair days work will feed his family costs more than a sub-standard or even dangerous one made by a starving 12 year old working 12 hour days at gun point. On the plus side, though Americans are unwilling to roll back environmental, product safety and labor standards any further to ensure corporate profits, the specter of having their jobs outsourced is convincing them to roll them back so America remains competitive (i.e. businesses whose headquarters and consumers are in the US won't send their production to places they aren't inconvenienced by the rule of law). If you think watching an American flagship like GM sink is hard, watching a centurys worth of labor, environmental and consumer protections sink is a lot harder, particularly when it means your hotdog bun, toothpaste or kids toy is lethal.

I'm not really pessimistic, as such, at least not in the short term; I'm cautiously optimistic that Western workers and consumers will soon have had enough (and in some cases already have) with deregulation through "free" trade and at the expense of everyone but the Western companies using it to circumvent Western law. I'm less optimistic that America will retain a leadership roll, because if the process continues as it is economic and industrial leadership will belong to China while political and social leadership belongs to Europe, and Europeans seems a lot more willing to reverse the trend than Americans. America has become too insular and too enamored of the status quo, and the biggest evidence it will take a major upheaval to change that is that some pretty big shocks have only entrenched that fetish as an object of defensive desperation for many. In cars as with so many other things European regs and labor produce better quality products while Far Eastern lack of regs and cheap labor produce less expensive ones. That leaves us with the "overpriced crap" market, and it's not surprising companies catering to it are collapsing, but preferred solution is less regs and lower quality; we'll compete with China by becoming like them. Personally I'd rather compete with Europe by becoming like them if we're going to copy someone, but I'd much prefer to see a return to the American Way of innovation through assimilation, mutual respect and cooperation.

Yeah, the world's gonna move forward; the question is will America take the lead as she always had until the '70s or be left in their wake.


For the moment they probably have to be enviromentally friendly, but the Three Gorges Dam is open now, so with any luck the EPA wil soon be abolished as un-American and, just like Beijing residents, none of us will be able to go to work without surgical masks (Made In China, of course. )