Auto bail-out

[Randynscottsboro]

Just to start some discussion, what do ya'll green guys think of us taxpayers giving BILLIONS to the automakers?

[Eric.MacLeod]

ya its funny if i dont pay my bills i get bad credit and they want take stuff away.. big companys get bailed out. same here if the train system says that they didnt make enough the state bails them out to. my wife doesnt see it the same with me, i just get in trouble then im grounded from buying play toys for awhile. i guess that i need to teach her to bail me out!! ha,ha Eric

[Randynscottsboro]

Eric, in all honesty, I think that we have become a peole that believes that failure is not an option. If our kids get poor grades, dumb down the class, if they can't play ball,,,don't keep score. Winning and lossing is wrong nowdays. If adults don't want to work, feed them anyway and if the automakers can't make a profit, feed them at the goverment tit. Bankrupcy would be good for the car makers and in the long run, good for the country as well. That is the world according to Randy.

[country53]

Randy,

OOOh hell yea!!!!

[450c]

Lets get one thing straight. The Detroit 3 are asking for loans not bailouts like the banks got. The banks got 700 billion with no strings attached. They produce no real product for that money. The auto manufacturers actually produce something and give millions of people jobs through spin-off effect.
Where are any of the bank CEO's being told to restructure or cut the wages of thier employees. These bankers caused the mess we are in but get hundreds of billions of tax payer money that they never have to pay back. That is where our anger should be directed.

[2010OWNER]

Oh Hell Ya!
Don't bail anyone out. Don't create jobs. Don't give government backed loans!
It worked just GREAT from '29 to '33 for Herbert Hoover.
It might give some people great pleasure to spite their faces, but they're still cutting off their nose.
Brian

[Tigerhaze]

My only concern is that we are robbing Peter to pay Paul. We are funding these bailouts and loans by borrowing from foreign countries (primarily China but others as well). We are going trillions into debt to these countries (that also happen to be our enemies) and someday they are going to call the loans and crash our economic system. I think our enemies have learned they can attack us economically easier than militarily.

[digitup2]

Yah it is a viscous circle if you bail out your side of the boarder then the big three want the same concessions from the Canadian government. Now the auto dealers are saying they also need financial help .Hell I think I need financial help to purchase my next car so they should help out the consumer as well or just give every one a new car .When will this crap stop !!We need to realize where this problem started and it started with big money not using it's common sense .Financing mortgages that should never have happened .Who's fault is that other than the financial gurus that crunched some numbers and made stupidity work .And like you say .We borrow money from say China and give it to these same so called financial gurus that screwed up earlier[This is not an intelligent move] next thing we know it's"Today the rice paddy tomorrow the world" .I do believe there is something real wrong with the hole damn mess .Let them go under and let some Chinese auto maker will buy out the the bunch .We may be driving rice rockets for a while but we will at least have our country's as well as the American and Canadian dollar's left. Just my 2 cents ! .Digitup.

[2010OWNER]

The problem, as distasteful as it may be, is that we can't let the banks and the Detroit 3 fail. No matter how much they deserve it. The consensus of most economists is that to ignore the problem would create a situation not seen since the Great Depression. 25% unemployment, %25 under- employment, and widespread foreclosures.
Study the history of the Great Depression. During the "Roaring '20's" and before, a culture of reducing government "interference" (regulation) and shifting the tax burden away from the very wealthy became the mantra. The lax oversight of the financial market turned it into nothing more than a gambling arena. Speculation was rampant on Wall Street and in the housing markets. Then the housing market bubble burst, leading to bank failures, leading to business failures, leading to unemployment, leading to more bank failures, leading to more business failures, leading to more unemployment, and so on and so on and so on. Our economic failures spread across the globe, destabilizing governments and allowing fascist and socialist movements to take hold. Weakened economically, France and Britain were unwilling, if not unable, to contain Germany's expansion into neighboring countries. Germany had pulled out of its depression in '35 because the Nazi government started to spend large amounts of money on a military build-up.
The U.S. government didn't "interfere" for 4 years as the middle class was beaten down to poverty.
Doing nothing is not an option I would endorse.
That being said, I do question the financial bailout of the big banks. That was the first thing tried during the Great Depression. Buying bad assets of the banks and, when that failed to have the desired result, buying shares of the banks, had little effect.
The slide of the Great Depression wasn't stopped until Roosevelt pushed through legislation that started creating jobs in '35. The economy really didn't recover until the massive spending for World War 2 created full employment. The Dow Jones didn't reach a pre '29 crash value until 1944.
I think the government should focus on creating family wage jobs for the middle class, so they have the money to spend on appliances and cars that people get paid family wages to make. Only then will the "unscrewing" of the middle class happen.

I return the soap box to you.

B.

[Lucky]

Just gimme a minute this soap box is pretty high to get up on. O.K. there now I'm ready.

Let's not forget about personal responsibility. I'm 38 and it seems to me every succeeding generation since my grandparents' seems to think it is entitled to MORE, MORE, MORE. In my adult life I have been told that I am the problem because I live within my means,I work at a sewer plant. I have a mortgage, save for vehicles, carry about $500.00 balance on a credit card and do as much of my own work as possible. There is a lot of billions being thrown around by the "wheels" but for the last 20 years I have seen a lot of little guys digging holes that no crawler could fill back in, i.e. $30,000 credit card dept, using home refinance like a piggy bank and taking on "predatory" mortagages. Anybody who ever thought an ARM was going to go down is an idiot.

I think I will get down now.

[Randynscottsboro]

Lively discussion huh? Just shows that we all have ideas of what is the RIGHT thing to do, but are powerless to do anything which brings me to the reason to start this thread. How many of you think it is time we quit putting the same theives and dumbasses in charge of our government, tax dollars and lives? The real problem with our economy is that we have too much taxes, too many regulations and way too many people being paid in one way or another not producing any wealth for our nation. The poor are poor and we are all going to be joining them if we keep paying everone else's bills. Let all able body people work at what ever they can do and this will also cure the blight of the illegal allien problem too. When all these giveaway programs are stopped, AMERICANS will want to go back to work when their belly gets to growling. It is up to us little guys, not the wall street elites or the Washington insiders to select who we want running this country and we had better get it done while we still have one to run. Mery Christmas to all and may you find something green under your tree/

[Lucky]

"the needs of the masses outweigh the needs of the few" -Spock

Something like that anyway. As much as it might hurt people I think in long run a hard recession would be a good thing. It would get people to realign their priorities. As far as the Government is concerned, I say keep the constition and get rid of the people in it by any means necessary as a warning then maybe we can get things back on track. If you never hear from me again you know that big brother is watching.

[digitup2]

Now Lucky you mention little guys diggin big holes .Sounds like you met my neighbors.both of them have H2s and never leave the highway with them .One of the many nice to have but the payments are hell scenarios.Our little town has Canada's largest automotive exhaust manifold manufacturer and last year they were doing great even with the down turn of the American economy.Every one of the employees got new cars and pickups But not my neighbors heck no they got to out do each other and they look at me like I am slightly off my rocker when I bring home the latest 3/4 ton 4x Diesel pickup from my business .But dam it we use these things they never cool off till we trade them so they justify my need to go mud muckin daily .Or something like that ?Both of these guys don't even know if they have a job come new years .I hope the best for them but that new house they got is gettin to be one heck of a burden maybe you can live in a H2 I sure hope the best for them the champagne tastes and beer budget can really get you down .I think we are ready for a full fledged recession .Hell lets get it out of our system as early as possible and get it over with NOW!!Say is the podium getting higher or the audience falling a sleep ? Digitup.

[Randynscottsboro]

"the need of the many outweigh the need of the few," right after he reached into the antimatter. How did that go? Not too good!

[Ray III]

Spare the rod, spoil the child. It's the same in the business world, if a badly run business is not allowed to fail then it will continue to be a failure until it becomes a drag on the American economy. Especially these union workers, if they don't get a big reality check that it is NOT worth $30 an hour (before benefits) to turn bolts all day, then they're going to go to other jobs and demand the same ridiculous level of compensation so American companies are unable to compete globally.

As to government non-intervention causing a depression, there are many who think exactly the opposite:

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FD ... -5409.aspx

"The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened."

I think a lot of people miss the fact that the Great Depression dragged on for TEN YEARS while FDR was President. That's right folks, the New Deal did absolutely nothing for a span of time longer than the current term limits of the office, until the US entered the war and everyone got put to work.

In the same way, I think a lot of people miss the fact that the government had its hand in the current mess by propping up Fannie Mae 10 years ago. This disrupted the mortgage market by subsidizing loans to people who never should have been given loans. Ronald Reagan had it right, government IS the problem.